Quantifying the relationship between predisaster mitigation spending and major disaster declarations for US states and territories.

Since the Stafford Act of 1988, the process of obtaining a formal Major Disaster Declaration has been codified for national implementation, with tasks defined at the smallest levels of local government up to the President. The Disas-ter Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA 2000) placed additional requirements on local government to plan for mitigation ac-tivities within their jurisdictions. The goal of DMA 2000 was to not only implement more mitigative actions at the local level, but also initiate a process by which local governments could set up ongoing conversations and collaborative efforts with neighboring jurisdictions to ensure continuous, proactive measures were taken against the impacts of disasters. Based on the increased attention paid to mitigation and planning activities, a reasonable expectation would be to see a decline in the number of major disaster declarations since DMA 2000. However, simple correlation analy-sis shows that since DMA 2000, the number of major disaster declarations continues to increase. This article is in-tended as a preliminary study to encourage more detailed analysis in the future of the impacts of federal policy on local-level disaster prevention.

Comparing predisaster mitigation grant spending with postdisaster assistance spending: Are mitigation investments saving federal dollars?

This work is a companion paper to "Quantifying the Relationship Between Predisaster Mitigation Spending and Major Disaster Declarations for US States and Territories." Mitigation is a relatively new undertaking, especially for local jurisdictions, within the United States disaster policy. The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA 2000) requires local jurisdictions to plan for and implement mitigative strategies in order to access federal grant funding options for emergency management. After DMA 2000 went into effect in the mid-2000s, a supporting study by the Multi-Hazard Mitigation Council (MMC 2005) found that on average, mitigation projects yielded a benefit-cost ratio of 4:1 at the local level.1 This paper evaluates and compares predisaster mitigation spending and postdisaster assistance spend-ing at the state and FEMA Regional levels, hypothesizing that as mitigation spending increases, postdisaster spend-ing should decrease. The results however indicate the opposite, with most states showing increasing in both types of spending over time.

The variational effects of jurisdictional attributes on hazard mitigation planning costs.

Under the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 and Federal Emergency Management Agency's subsequent Interim Final Rule, the requirement was placed on local governments to author and gain approval for a Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP) for the areas under their jurisdiction. Low completion percentages for HMPs-less than one-third of eligible governments-were found by an analysis conducted 3 years after the final deadline for the aforementioned legislation took place. Follow-up studies showed little improvement at 5 and 8 years after the deadline. Based on these results, a previous study hypothesized that the cost of creating a HMP might be an influential factor in explaining why most jurisdictions had failed to write or gain approval for a HMP. The frequency of natural hazards experienced by the planning jurisdiction, the number of jurisdictions participating in the plan, and the population and population density were found to explain more than half of the variation in HMP costs. This study is a continuation of that effort, finding that there are significant differences in cost both across ranges of values for the jurisdictional attributes and single-jurisdictional versus multijurisdictional plans.

How much do hazard mitigation plans cost? An analysis of federal grant data.

Under the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 and Federal Emergency Management Agency's subsequent Interim Final Rule, the requirement was placed on local governments to author and gain approval for a Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP) for the areas under their jurisdiction. Low completion percentages for HMPs--less than one-third of eligible governments--were found by an analysis conducted 3 years after the final deadline for the aforementioned legislation took place. Follow-up studies showed little improvement at 5 and 8 years after the deadline. It was hypothesized that the cost of a HMP is a significant factor in determining whether or not a plan is completed. A study was conducted using Boolean Matrix Analysis methods to determine what, if any, characteristics of a certain community will most influence the cost of a HMP. The frequency of natural hazards experienced by the planning area, the number of jurisdictions participating in the HMEP, the population, and population density were found to significantly affect cost. These variables were used in a regression analysis to determine their predictive power for cost. It was found that along with two interaction terms, the variables explain approximately half the variation in HMP cost.

Local hazard mitigation plans: a preliminary estimation of state-level completion from 2004 to 2009.

According to the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 and subsequent federal policy, local governments are required to have a Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP) written and approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be eligible for federal mitigation assistance. This policy took effect on November 1, 2004. Using FEMA's database of approved HMPs and US Census Bureau's 2002 Survey of Local Governments, it is estimated that 3 years after the original deadline, 67 percent of the country's active local governments were without an approved HMP. A follow-up examination in 2009 of the eight states with the lowest completion percentages did not indicate significant improvement following the initial study and revealed inconsistencies in plan completion data over time. The completion percentage varied greatly by state and did not appear to follow any expected pattern such as wealth or hazard vulnerability that might encourage prompt completion of a plan. Further, the results indicate that -92 percent of the approved plans were completed by a multijurisdictional entity, which suggests single governments seldom complete and gain approval for plans. Based on these results, it is believed that state-level resolution is not adequate for explaining the variation of plan completion, and further study at the local level is warranted.