The EDGeS (Economic Decision Guide Software) Tool version 1.0 implements a rational, systemic methodology for selecting cost-effective community resilience alternative strategies.The methodology is based on guidance provided in the NIST "Community Resilience Economic Decision Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems" (Economic Decision Guide). The decision support software is aimed at those engaged in community-level resilience planning, such as community planners, and resilience officers, as well as budget officers. It provides a standard economic methodology for evaluating investment decisions aimed to improve the ability of communities to adapt to, withstand, and quickly recover from disruptive events.EDGeS is designed for use in conjunction with the NIST "Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems" (CRPG). The methodology used in this software decision support tool frames the economic decision process by identifying and comparing the relevant present and future streams of costs and benefits-the latter realized through cost savings and damage loss avoidance-associated with new capital investment into resilience to those future streams generated by maintaining a community's status-quo.This methodological approach aims to enable the built environment to be utilized more efficiently in terms of loss reductions during recovery and to enable faster and more efficient recovery in the face of future disruptions. It encourages users to consider non-disaster related benefits (co-benefits and co-costs) of resilience planning. Topics related to non-market values and uncertainty are also included.The methods employed are based on best practices in building economics and the economics of community resilience planning. EDGeS is meant to be practical, flexible, and transparent, as the methodological approach can be applied across a wide range of community types and project types.

Building stakeholders need practical metrics, data, and tools to support decisions related to sustainable building designs, technologies, standards, and codes. The Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has addressed this high priority national need by extending its metrics and tools for sustainable building products, known as Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES), to whole-buildings through its Building Industry Reporting and Design for Sustainability (BIRDS) framework. The BIRDS framework is a sustainability measurement system consisting of whole-building sustainability metrics that are based on innovative extensions to life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle costing (LCC) approaches involving whole-building energy simulations. The measurement system evaluates the sustainability of both the materials and the energy used by a building over time. It assesses the "carbon footprint" of buildings as well as 11 other environmental performance metrics, and integrates economic performance metrics to yield science-based measures of the business case for investment choices in high-performance green buildings.The BIRDS framework has been leveraged to assist building architects and designers to evaluate the sustainability performance of custom building designs through the development of BIRDS NEST ("Neutral Environment Software Tool"), an application programming interface (API) that allows other software tools to submit building characteristics and performance information (in a standardized format) to develop sustainability performance metrics for a customized building design.The beta version of BIRDS NEST is focused on performing a life-cycle environmental impact assessment (LCIA) based on 12 impact categories for single-family residential buildings. The BIRDS NEST has been designed to interact with NREL's OpenStudio (OS), an open-source, cross-platform collection of software tools that supports whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus. In collaboration with NREL's OS Team, an OS "Measure" has been developed to successfully send and receive information to and from BIRDS NEST, allowing OS users to develop LCIA estimates for OS building models without leaving the OS application.This technical manual describes BIRDS and its LCA and LCIA methodology and data, development of BIRDS NEST and the associated OS Measure, and BIRDS NEST's limitations, planned release, and the development of its future capabilities. Keywordslife-cycle assessment; life-cycle impact assessment; energy efficiency; residential buildings; lowenergy buildings; net-zero energy performance; sustainability; software ii This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST. TN.1976 iii This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST. TN.1976 Preface This documentation was developed by the Applied Economics Office (AEO) in the Engineering Laboratory (EL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIS...

Building stakeholders need practical metrics, data, and tools to support decisions related to sustainable building designs, technologies, standards, and codes. The Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has addressed this high priority national need by extending its metrics and tools for sustainable building products, known as Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES), to whole-buildings. Wholebuilding sustainability metrics have been developed based on innovative extensions to life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle costing (LCC) approaches involving whole-building energy simulations. The measurement system evaluates the sustainability of both the materials and the energy used by a building over time. It assesses the "carbon footprint" of buildings as well as 11 other environmental performance metrics, and integrates economic performance metrics to yield science-based measures of the business case for investment choices in high-performance, green buildings. Building Industry Reporting and Design for Sustainability (BIRDS) applies the sustainability measurement system to an extensive whole-building performance database NIST has compiled for this purpose. In addition to the database developed for previous versions of BIRDS, the updated BIRDS Commercial database now includes energy, environmental, and cost measurements for 13 680 new commercial and non-low rise residential buildings, covering the 15 building prototypes based on the PNNL Commercial Prototype Building Models in 228 cities across all U.S. states for study period lengths ranging from 1 year to 40 years. The sustainability performance of buildings designed to meet current state energy codes can be compared to their performance when meeting four alternative building energy standard editions to determine the impact of energy efficiency on sustainability performance. The impact of the building location and the investor's time horizon on sustainability performance can also be measured.

Building stakeholders need practical metrics, data, and tools to support decisions related to sustainable building designs, technologies, standards, and codes. The Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has addressed this high priority national need by extending its metrics and tools for sustainable building products, known as Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES), to whole-buildings. Wholebuilding sustainability metrics have been developed based on innovative extensions to life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle costing (LCC) approaches involving whole-building energy simulations. The measurement system evaluates the sustainability of both the materials and the energy used by a building over time. It assesses the "carbon footprint" of buildings as well as 11 other environmental performance metrics and integrates economic performance metrics to yield science-based measures of the business case for investment choices in high-performance, green buildings.Building Industry Reporting and Design for Sustainability (BIRDS) applies the sustainability measurement system to an extensive whole-building performance database NIST has compiled for this purpose. In addition to the database developed for previous versions of BIRDS, the updated BIRDS Commercial database now includes energy, environmental, and cost measurements for 17 100 new commercial and non-low rise residential buildings. These buildings cover the 15 building prototypes based on the PNNL Commercial Prototype Building Models in 228 cities across all U.S. states for study period lengths ranging from 1 year to 40 years. The sustainability performance of buildings designed to meet current state energy codes can be compared to their performance when meeting four alternative building energy standard editions to determine the impact of energy efficiency on sustainability performance. The impact of the building location and the investor's time horizon on sustainability performance can also be measured.

Increasing numbers of 'smart' and instrumented wells are being completed worldwide. Many of these types of completions will require perforating as part of the initial completion and many more may require perforating at some time during the life of the well. Even completions that do not require perforating, such as common packer/sliding sleeve open hole completions, still rely on perforation technology to provide a back up contingency. This paper identifies challenges and methods developed to mitigate problems associated with and to enable perforating instrumented and smart wells. This paper will also review the tools and techniques available to perforate these types of completions, while avoiding damage to pipe external control lines, cables, gauges, fiber optic lines, and other critical completion equipment. Discussions will cover a brief history and limitations of currently available tools and techniques. Details of testing and tool developments will be discussed followed by lessons learned from a multi-well field program.The instrumented 'smart well' development program discussed in this paper includes six wells ranging from a 2,600' measured depth vertical well to 3 horizontal completions with measured depths exceeding 16,000'. The program included running over 20 logs ranging from magnetic based detection tools to ultrasonic tools, and perforating 129 separate intervals. Results of testing available tools and details of development of new equipment, tools and techniques will be discussed. No external cables or other smart well components were damaged during the 129 perforating operations.