The Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS™) Lab at the Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center aims to improve community resilience planning across Texas, the United States, and internationally through applied research, outreach, and education. The Lab is focused on implementing and advancing the PIRS™ method, which communities can use to systematically and spatially assess – and then integrate – their networks of plans to strengthen resilience, maximize public investments, and reduce disaster impacts.
The mission of the PIRS™ Lab is based on collaborative:
- Research, to advance PIRS™-related theory and practice
- Outreach, to engage with communities in applying PIRS™ and strengthening resilience
- Education, to incorporate the “PIRS™ approach” in classrooms, planning departments, and council chambers
How Plan Integration Improves Community Resilience
Communities face mounting tolls from natural hazards, and many are looking to become more resilient through coordinated and hazard-aware planning, but challenges related to plan conflict and spatial understanding can limit the effectiveness of their efforts.
- Plan conflict: The various plans that guide a community’s growth and management are often produced by various agencies and groups in pursuit of a variety of goals. Insufficient collaboration results in conflicting policy direction and an uncoordinated approach to risk reduction.
- Spatial understanding: Many plans and policies have an inherent (and sometimes overt) spatiality—they apply to some parts of a community but not to others. Where policies do and do not apply influences a community’s approach to hazard mitigation and its ability to reduce vulnerability.
The Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ process helps communities address these challenges, enabling them to identify and resolve inconsistencies across their networks of plans by systematically and spatially evaluating their plan documents and existing vulnerabilities.
PIRS™ can also be (and has been) applied to help build resilience in the wake of disasters. Communities recovering from and rebuilding after hazard events have a “window of opportunity” to plan in a more coordinated and risk-aware manner. They can elevate hazard mitigation and resilience — and integrate them throughout their network of plans — using the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™.
PIRS™ promoted by the American Planning Association
PIRS™ has been adopted by the American Planning Association (APA) as a preferred method of plan integration. Training programs based on the PIRS™ Guidebook are offered on APA’s Passport eLearning platform.
Application of PIRS™ in Communities
Since its inception, PIRS™ has been applied in research and practice and used to evaluate hundreds of neighborhoods in dozens of communities (and counting) nationally and worldwide. Case study descriptions for many of these can be found on the PIRS Hub website
Texas
- Beaumont
- Caldwell
- Houston
- League City
- Port Arthur
- Rio Grande City
- Rockport
USA
- Asbury Park, New Jersey
- Asheville, North Carolina
- Atascadero, California
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Beaufort, North Carolina
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Duluth, Minnesota
- Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Napa County, California
- Nashua, New Hampshire
- New Baltimore, Michigan
- Norfolk, Virginia
- Phoenix, Arizona
- Pinellas County, Florida
- Placer County, California
- St. Clair Shores, Michigan
- Santa Barbara County, California
- Seattle, Washington
- Tampa, Florida
- Temecula, California
- Washington, North Carolina
- Wayne County, New York
International
- Changsha, China
- Dordrecht, the Netherlands
- Guangzhou, China
- Nijmegen, the Netherlands
- Rotterdam, the Netherlands
- Shenzhen, China
- Tokyo, Japan
Current Research Directions
- Applying PIRS™ to flooding hazards
- Applying PIRS™ to wildfire hazards
- Applying PIRS™ to urban extreme heat hazards
- Applying PIRS™ in multi-hazard contexts
- Integrating PIRS™ and historical preservation
- Developing an updated PIRS™ Guidebook, 3rd Edition
- Exploring Large Language Model (LLM) applications in the PIRS™ process
- Integrating PIRS™ with other existing programs and tools (e.g., FEMA’s Community Rating System incentive program)
How to Connect with PIRS™ Lab
If you are interested in applying PIRS in your community or as part of a research project, or if you have questions, please reach out to our team directly:
Matthew Malecha, PhD | Director | mmalecha@arch.tamu.edu
Siyu Yu, PhD, AICP | Associate Director for Research and Education | syu@arch.tamu.edu
Jaimie Masterson, AICP | Associate Director for Outreach | jmasterson@arch.tamu.edu
Or contact the HRRC at 979-845-7813 or hrrc@arch.tamu.edu.