Twenty Years After Katrina: What Laboratory Designers Can Learn About Resilience
Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, laboratory designers are rethinking facilities as critical infrastructure, using lessons from the disaster to build more resilient science environments.
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the US Gulf Coast with devastating force. Beyond the immediate human toll, the disaster exposed profound vulnerabilities in America’s built environment—hospitals, laboratories, universities, and research facilities were among those hit hardest. Two decades later, as climate-related disasters multiply in scale and frequency, laboratory designers and builders are revisiting Katrina’s lessons to inform a new era of resilient science infrastructure.
George Guszcza, D.Eng., CPEM, CCM, president and CEO of the National Institute of Building Sciences, has spent his career bridging military reconstruction, federal recovery programs, and private-sector engineering projects. Reflecting on Katrina 20 years later, he argues that laboratory planners and builders must view their facilities not simply as workplaces but as critical infrastructure essential to both research continuity and community recovery. Here, Guszcza speaks with Lab Design News about the lessons that the lab design/build industry can take from this disaster.
Designing for function, not just compliance
Traditionally, laboratory construction has focused on meeting building codes and standards, ensuring that structures are technically compliant. But Hurricane Katrina revealed how insufficient that approach can be when confronted with unprecedented hazards.
“The way we approach resilience is evolving, and while codes and standards are seeking to address the inadequacy of risk models based only on past patterns, incidents, and disasters, the manufacturing, design, construction, and owner communities must move past simple conformance to performance-based design,” Guszcza explains.
He stresses that each laboratory must be evaluated on a continuum of functional recovery—a framework that measures how quickly a facility can regain essential operations after a disruption. This approach forces project teams to think not only about structural integrity but also about containment of hazardous research materials, security during periods of civil disruption, and the broader role of laboratories in sustaining communities during recovery.
Protecting research assets in times of crisis
Katrina demonstrated the fragility of scientific continuity when infrastructure fails. Power outages, flooding, and supply chain breakdowns can wipe out years of research within hours. Today, laboratory managers have new tools at their disposal to mitigate those risks.
“BIM and digital twins give lab managers a real-time map of where hazardous and sensitive materials are located, so they can act quickly in an emergency,” says Guszcza. These tools can integrate utilities, such as refrigeration requirements, and—when combined with AI forecasting and robotics—allow remote handling of dangerous materials in situations where human intervention is unsafe.
This integration of digital tools into laboratory design and operations allows institutions to model “first at risk” assets, simulate disaster scenarios, and pre-plan interventions—capabilities that were not widely available in 2005 but are increasingly indispensable today.
Closing gaps in codes and standards
Laboratories represent some of the most complex and risk-intensive facilities within the built environment. Yet building codes often lag behind emerging risk realities. Guszcza highlights an evolving framework that could change the industry.
“One area that is being developed in the development of seismic code is a new design approach called Functional Recovery,” he says. “The new model code would provide levels of resilient design that a lab could decide on, based on the level of risk it was comfortable accepting, which also aligned with the construction budget.”
Coupled with standards like ISO 19650 and NBIMS, which enable structured data-sharing and resilience testing during design, and the forthcoming national digital twin standard from NIBS, these frameworks move labs beyond static compliance toward dynamic, continuously monitored performance.
Building for faster recovery
Even when a laboratory survives a disaster structurally, research may remain paralyzed due to cascading failures of non-structural systems. Katrina underscored how water damage, chemical spills, and power failures can halt operations indefinitely.
“Modern means of construction should include robust use of pre-planned, modular, and industrialized construction,” Guszcza says. “Combined with digital twin or sophisticated BIM models, this can greatly accelerate supply chain support and dramatically reduce recovery time to full or partial functionality.”
Simple measures—proper bracing of pipes, redundancies in critical systems, and hardened storage of hazardous materials—can significantly reduce downtime. Prefabrication and modular strategies also allow damaged components to be replaced more quickly, restoring partial operations while full recovery continues.
Aligning budgets with lifecycle resilience
A persistent challenge for laboratory design is balancing resilience against budget constraints. Too often, owners focus on first costs rather than lifecycle savings. Katrina’s aftermath revealed the enormous economic impact of downtime, lost data, and recovery delays—costs that dwarf the savings of minimal design.
“Bringing lab operators, managers, and technicians into the conversation at the start can yield valuable insights as the user base often understands where the pain points are, what breaks down, and what resilience measures will actually work in daily practice,” Guszcza advises.
Digital tools now allow scenario modeling of trade-offs between capital investments and avoided losses, helping decision-makers better weigh resilience against cost. Artificial intelligence can add predictive analysis over a facility’s lifecycle, revealing strategies that deliver the highest return without overspending.
Resilience as a shared responsibility
Perhaps Katrina’s greatest lesson is that resilience cannot be achieved in isolation. A hardened laboratory is of little use if roads are impassable or utilities are down for weeks. Guszcza calls for laboratories to be understood as essential community infrastructure, requiring integration into broader resilience planning.
“One hardened lab doesn’t make a resilient city,” he says. “If your lab has power but the streets are unpassable, responders and critical staff cannot get there. If your water supply, HVAC, and power are out, it could lead to dangerous and hazardous conditions. Resilience only works when all the community's systems function together.”
This means developing partnerships not only among designers, contractors, and owners but also with utilities, local governments, and emergency responders. By aligning resilience plans and priorities, laboratories can ensure continuity of operations while also contributing to community recovery.
Looking forward, Guszcza argues that laboratory facilities must be integrated into what he calls a “system of systems” approach to resilience. This requires breaking down silos between individual facilities and community infrastructure, ensuring that interdependencies are identified and addressed before disaster strikes.
“The biggest dangers are the ‘unknown unknowns’ that exist because we are unaware of compounding and interacting risks,” Guszcza says. “This is where communities need to integrate more robustly.”
For laboratory designers and builders, this means engaging early in community resilience planning, ensuring that research continuity is protected not only through building-specific safeguards but also through coordinated, citywide strategies.
A call to action
Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, the message for laboratory design professionals is clear: resilience is not optional, nor is it solely about stronger walls and higher floodwalls. It is about rethinking the laboratory as a vital node in a larger network of scientific, civic, and economic continuity. As billion-dollar disasters become commonplace, laboratories must be designed not only to survive but to sustain science, safeguard communities, and accelerate recovery.
“Currently, building owners bear most of the costs of resilience, but everyone benefits—taxpayers, insurers, businesses, and communities,” Guszcza says. “We need financial models that align these interests and stimulate resilience investment. Otherwise, resilience won’t be scaled.”
Hurricane Katrina’s legacy is a warning, but also presents an opportunity to build laboratories that are as adaptable and resilient as the research they support.
