RALEIGH, N.C. — The RCI Foundation’s board of directors has allocated funds for the revision of one its best selling publications entitled Wind Pressure on Low Slope Roofs. This monograph is the work of Stephen Patterson, P.E., R.R.C of Roof Technical Services, Inc. and Madan Mehta, Ph.D., P.E. at the University of Texas at Arlington. The RCI Foundation hopes to roll out the revised publication towards the end of 2012. According to Mehta, “the third edition is keyed to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Standard “Minimum Design Loads on Buildings and Other Structures” published in 2010, commonly referred to as ASCE 7-10 Standard. The ASCE 7-10 Standard has been substantially revised from its earlier edition published in 2005 (referred to as ASCE 7-05 Standard). Major changes in ASCE 7-10 Standard that impact the third edition of the Monograph are:

• New strength design level wind speeds instead of the (earlier) service design level wind speeds—a concept that revolutionizes our understanding of the safety provisions inherent in the design of roofing systems for wind resistance.

• Elimination of the Importance Factor—an add-on safety provision used in the earlier editions of the Standard to account for different degrees of risk inherent in buildings. This safety provision has now been absorbed into the wind speed values so that the ASCE 7-10 Standard (and hence the revised Monograph) has three wind speed maps in place of only one wind speed map used previously.