Overviews of Infrastructure and Building Codes, Standards, and Regulations

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has published two reports that provide overviews of infrastructure and building codes, standards, and regulations.

The first report, Infrastructure Codes, Standards, and Regulations: Frequently Asked Questions, discusses the purposes of these measures and explains those that apply to certain kinds of critical infrastructure, including water and wastewater infrastructure. The report also covers transportation, energy, communications, and dams and levees infrastructure. The report notes building codes do not apply to infrastructure, except in cases where infrastructure connects to or runs through a building. Additionally, water and wastewater utilities need to be cognizant of building codes for the buildings they maintain, which is the topic of the other report. As it notes, questions about building codes have arisen in the wake of disasters, which have tested the applicability of sometimes old standards to more frequent and intense events. The report observes FEMA conducted a study into 18.1 million mostly residential buildings constructed between 2000 and 2017 and found that if about half were built to more recent and resilient building codes they would avoid losses of approximately $1.6 billion. Read the reports at CRS (Infrastructure Codes, Standards, and Regulations and Building Codes, Standards, and Regulations) and below.