Understanding Your Risks

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has developed this series of mitigation planning "how-to" guides to assist states, communities, and tribes in enhancing their natural hazard mitigation planning capabilities. These guides are designed to provide the type of information states and communities need to initiate and maintain a planning process that will result in safer communities. These guides are applicable to states and communities of various sizes and varying ranges of financial and technical resources. This how-to series is not intended to be the last word on any of the subject matter covered; rather, it is meant to be an easy to understand guide for the field practitioner. In practice, these guides may be supplemented with more extensive technical data and the use of experts if possible. The how-to guides cover the following topics: Getting started with the mitigation planning process including important considerations for how you can organize to develop a plan; Identifying hazards and assessing losses to your community and state; Setting mitigation priorities and goals for your community; Evaluating potential mitigation measures through the use of benefit-cost analysis and other techniques; Creating a mitigation plan and implementation strategy; Implementing the mitigation plan including project funding and revising the plan periodically as changes in the community occur; and Incorporating special circumstances in hazard mitigation planning for historic structures, among other topics. Risk assessment answers the fundamental question that fuels the natural hazard mitigation planning process: "What would happen if a natural hazard event occurred in your community or state?" Risk assessment is the process of measuring the potential loss of life, personal injury, economic injury, and property damage resulting from natural hazards by assessing the vulnerability of people, buildings, and infrastructure to natural hazards. Risk assessment provides the foundation for the rest of the mitigation planning process. The risk assessment process focuses your attention on areas most in need by evaluating which populations and facilities are most vulnerable to natural hazards and to what extent injuries and damages may occur. It tells you: The hazards to which your state or community is susceptible; What these hazards can do to physical, social, and economic assets; Which areas are most vulnerable to damage from these hazards; and The resulting cost of damages or costs avoided through future mitigation projects. In addition to benefiting mitigation planning, risk assessment information also allows emergency management personnel to establish early response priorities by identifying potential hazards and vulnerable assets. The steps in this how-to guide describe some methods you may use to develop this information. Subsequent guides assist you in determining priorities for mitigation and in deciding which assets in your community or state should be protected.