HR&A Supports San Francisco’s Concrete Building Safety Program to Advance Earthquake Resilience

San Francisco sits along multiple active fault lines, making seismic resilience central to the City’s resilience planning. Financial feasibility is understood as a significant barrier to improving earthquake resilience across San Francisco’s seismically vulnerable concrete buildings.

Responding to this challenge, the City and County of San Francisco engaged HR&A to lead the Policy and Financial Feasibility Study for the Concrete Building Safety Program (CBSP). Working with our subconsultants, Arup and Laurie Johnson, we quantified the seismic risk and the potential benefits of retrofits and examined the current policy ecosystem and financial feasibility of retrofitting. The study recommends policies and actions that could make retrofits more financially feasible, giving building owners, policymakers, and other stakeholders a clearer path to safer buildings.

We’re grateful to the City for its leadership on work that protects residents and workers long before an emergency, and to Arup and Laurie Johnson for their expertise.

Read the full study here.