The National Institute of Standards and Technology started working toward its goal of a wind-load standard for tornado-resistant design after a tornado devastated Joplin, Mo., on May 22, 2011. A decade later, on Dec. 1, NIST reached its goal when the American Society of Civil Engineers Structural Engineering Institute published the 2022 edition of its bible on design loads. ASCE/SEI 7-22 contains, for the first time ever, a chapter on tornado resistance.
“This is all brand new, even within the technical community,” says Marc L. Levitan, lead research engineer in the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program of the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) and chair of the ASCE/SEI 7-22 task committee on tornado loads, which developed Chapter 32 of ASCE/SEI 7-22: Minimum Design Loads & Associated Criteria for Buildings & Other Structures.