From Risk to Resilience and Safeguarding Cultural Treasures: The New ASTM Property Resilience Assessment (PRA) Standard Guide Explained

Apr 21, 2025

Nestled away in Altadena, California, was the Guinness World Record holder for the largest bunny collection in the world called the Bunny Museum. The 7,000-square-foot museum housed over 45,000 bunny-themed artifacts; was an embodiment of the creativity and passion of its two founders, Candace Frazee and Steve Lubanski; and was a sanctuary of folk art, history and pop culture displaying work from a variety of artists spanning generations. However, in January 2025, the Eaton Fire struck and tore through Altadena, damaging over 9,000 structures, leaving nothing but ashes of the Bunny Museum and the irreplaceable art collectibles stored within it. (1)

Unfortunately, this is not the only museum that has suffered damage or been completely destroyed by natural hazard events. In the last year alone, there were several other museums impacted by Mother Nature, resulting in significant damage or destruction. Floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, led to 50 museums facing damage ranging from water infiltration to complete ruins. The extent of the damage to the facilities, equipment, and irreplaceable collection was significant and has still not been fully quantified (2). The Roswell Museum in New Mexico, a cultural landmark since 1973, faced a devasting flood in October 2024 when over five feet of water infiltrated the museum's 51,000-square-foot space and resulted in at least $12 million in water damage; it is still currently closed until further notice.(3)

Enter: The New ASTM PRA Guidelines—a Milestone in Resilience Planning

Last Fall, after four years in development, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International, an organization that creates and publishes industry standards, published the ASTM E3429-24 Property Resilience Assessment (PRA) Standard Guide (4). This marks a significant milestone in the advancement of resilience planning and climate adaptation in the built environment to reduce the risk of losing more cultural landmarks and invaluable collections around the world.

This standard guide provides a structured, actionable framework for assessing property resilience for a broad range of natural- and climate-related hazards, enabling property stakeholders to better understand risks and prioritize investments in identifying mitigation and adaptation measures. While its application spans numerous markets, one market poised to benefit immensely from this guide is the museum/cultural institution sector, particularly regarding the facilities where invaluable art and cultural collections are housed.

Below we explore the purpose and significance of the ASTM PRA Standard Guide, its value when applied to museums, and its potential to enhance the resilience of both the physical property of museums and associated buildings, such as the storage facilities housing art collections, and the contents within the museums.

The Purpose of the ASTM PRA Standard Guide

The ASTM PRA Standard Guide was developed to address the growing need for a standardized approach to evaluating property resilience, as we continue to see an increase in the frequency and severity of natural- and climate-related hazard events. Resilience, in this context, is defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as "the ability to prepare for anticipated hazards, adapt to changing conditions, to withstand and limit negative impacts due to events, and to return to intended functions/services within a specified time after a disruptive event.”

At the core of the ASTM PRA, the guide serves several key purposes:

1. Assessment Framework: It provides a comprehensive methodology for identifying and assessing vulnerabilities related to the building, building systems, site features, operations, and surrounding environments.
2. Decision-making Tool: By highlighting areas of risk, the guide can assist property owners, investors, and managers prioritize resilience measures based on cost-effectiveness, risk reduction potential, and alignment with organizational goals.
3. Standardization: The guide establishes baseline criteria for what should be included in resilience assessments, facilitating better communication among stakeholders and ensuring alignment across projects.
4. Futureproofing: With its forward-looking approach, the guide encourages stakeholders to consider long-term trends, such as climate change and technological advancements, in their resilience and adaptation planning.

Why Resilience Matters, Particularly for Museums

For museums and the associated facilities used to store art collections, these principles are especially relevant. Museums face unique challenges that make resilience planning essential, and the ASTM PRA Standard Guide provides the tools necessary to meet these challenges effectively.

Museums serve as cultural guardians, preserving and showcasing humanity’s artistic and historical heritage. However, they are not immune to natural and climate-related hazard events, or the resulting damage. In fact, museums hold a unique mission from other building types that makes them vulnerable in several ways:

1. Irreplaceable Collections: Unlike typical real estate assets, the contents of museums—from ancient artifacts to priceless paintings—are often one-of-a-kind and cannot be restored or replaced if damaged. Damage to these collections can result in a wide span of losses such as, but not limited to, important pieces of history, scientific knowledge, archaeological artifacts, original artworks, research, cultural celebrations and identities, and archives and records.
2. Specialized Environments: Artworks and artifacts often require tightly controlled environmental conditions, including temperature, humidity, and lighting, to prevent deterioration. Disruptions to these conditions can have devastating effects if climate-controlled areas are impacted.
3. Public Access: Museums must balance resilience efforts with their mission to remain accessible to the public, which can complicate adaptation strategies being implemented. Issues such as temporary or permanent closure of buildings or exhibits may arise which then compounds into a loss of the visitor's experience, challenges with accessibility, disruption to educational programs, and overall loss of public engagement. There can also be issues on the facility side related to security, financial challenges, staff disruptions, and potential delays to various research and exhibition plans.
4. Storage Vulnerabilities: Many museums store significant portions of their collections in offsite facilities that may lack the same level of security, environmental controls, or disaster preparedness their main buildings have.

Applying the ASTM PRA Standard Guide to Museums

The ASTM PRA Standard Guide can be a game-changer for museums and their storage facilities that house the collections by providing a structured approach to resilience assessments for both existing buildings and when designing new museum spaces. The ASTM PRA is broken down into three main stages, starting with site-specific hazard identification, assessing vulnerabilities, and identifying possible resilience measures that can be implemented to reduce risks associated with the vulnerabilities identified.

1. Identifying Natural Hazards

The first step in the PRA process involves identifying the specific climate and natural hazards a property might face. This stage includes looking at historical data as well as using project models. Stage 1 also includes verifying the initial information provided in the hazard screening and supporting it with other resources such as local or regional hazard maps, models, or data sources, when made readily available.

Stage 1 allows for risk awareness to be able to understand what a museum's exposure may be before a natural hazard event occurs and also provides the foundation on whether further assessment is needed, if there are high-risk hazards identified.

2. Assessing Vulnerabilities

Once location-specific hazards are identified in Stage 1, a Stage 2 review will evaluate safety, damage, and functional recovery time. For existing museums, a Stage 2 review involves a site inspection to ascertain site-specific vulnerabilities, as well as identify any existing resilient strategies in place. Moreover, for new construction, Stage 2 will review all the available construction documents to identify opportunities to enhance the design to be more resilient.

Stage 2 provides museums with the site-specific physical risks associated with each of the identified hazard risks reviewed in Stage 1 and will be an indicator if a Stage 3 review is recommended.

3. Identifying Resilience and Adaptation Measures

Stage 3 of the ASTM PRA is to identify conceptual resilience measures to enhance property-specific resilience for the vulnerabilities identified in Stage 2 to enhance the property's performance and recovery. It will identify resilience and adaptation measures and provide rough order of magnitude (ROM) costs, time estimate to implement, the current risk without the measure, and the subsequent risk level from implementing the strategy. For a museum, some resilience measures might look like installing flood barriers, having backup power to ensure climate-controlled exhibits can be properly maintained, securing roof membranes and equipment, or utilizing non-combustible materials if a museum is near a wildfire zone. It will all depend on the hazards present at a given location as well as the construction and maintenance of a museum, as these will inform what type of measures are identified in Stage 3.

As it pertains to museums, the goal of the ASTM PRA Standard Guide is to enhance their resilience to natural- and climate-related hazards. By providing a structured assessment process, this guide will help museum stakeholders begin to understand the potential risks to their facilities and associated buildings, as well as reduce significant damage costs or complete destruction of museums and the invaluable collections stored within them. By implementing the ASTM PRA, it can preserve the irreplaceable collections within museums; provide proactive measures that ultimately can reduce the costs that are associated with damage, repairs, and insurance claims; and reduce operational downtime. In addition, there are many synergies that can align with sustainability goals that a museum might have related to reducing their environmental footprint.

In a world where risks are growing as we experience more frequent and severe hazard events, resilience is no longer a luxury—it is a necessity. Whether it’s special collections, like bunnies, art by style or era, or ancient artifact, the ASTM PRA Standard Guide is an essential tool in their ongoing efforts to protect the cultural treasures that connect us to our past, inspire our future, and unite us to each other.

SOURCES:

1. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/25/nx-s1-5257498/los-angeles-fire-eaton-home-belongings
2. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unesco-launches-international-emergency-mission-assess-cultural-heritage-situation-rio-grande-do-sul?utm
3. https://roswell-nm.gov/1259/Roswell-Museum?utm
4. https://www.astm.org/e3429-24.html

Contributed by Courtney Wladyka, AIA, NCARB, Fitwel Ambassador, and Co-director of ESG at Marx|Okubo. Courtney serves as an ASTM E3429-24 PRA Leadership Team Member and Course Instructor.

Questions? Contact: Courtney_Wladyka@marxokubo.com