Abstract
This article describes the findings of a national survey of State Hazard Mitigation Officers (SHMOs) in U.S. states and territories in order to gain a greater understanding of the roles that they play in assisting local governments to build the capacity required to successfully develop and implement Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-funded Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) grants, an important but understudied aspect of hazard mitigation governance. The research questions focus on: (1) How states and territories enable local governments to develop and implement HMA grants and (2) SHMOs’ opinions regarding their perceived capacity and effectiveness in assisting local governments to develop and implement HMA grants. Results show that while states and territories are relatively well-equipped to perform general administrative duties required by FEMA, SHMOs expressed wide variation in their capacity to assist local governments to develop and implement HMA grants. This was particularly evident with regard to the delivery of specific technical assistance measures required to develop HMA grants. Survey responses also highlight modest levels of participation in FEMA-designed efforts to delegate responsibility to states and territories and low levels of participation in programs that offer pre-application funding to local governments to help them develop HMA grant applications. These findings should concern FEMA as the agency embarks on the implementation of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, an ambitious pre-disaster hazard mitigation grant initiative.
Highlights
Disaster-related losses in the United States have risen exponentially over the last several decades and this trend is expected to accelerate due to the compounding effects of climate change and continued growth in hazard-prone areas [1,2,3]
The implementation of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-provided hazard mitigation grants often supports a larger risk reduction strategy employed by communities [7,8,9,10], including actions intended to adapt to climate-change induced or exacerbated natural hazards and disasters [11,12,13]
Of the 43 respondents, 6 reported that they were not the State Hazard Mitigation Officers (SHMOs), but rather an individual designated by the SHMO to answer the survey as they were responsible for Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) grants administration
Summary
Disaster-related losses in the United States have risen exponentially over the last several decades and this trend is expected to accelerate due to the compounding effects of climate change and continued growth in hazard-prone areas [1,2,3]. While states and territories serve as an important intermediary between federal funding and project development and implementation at the municipal and county level, there is limited research on the role that states play in the HMA administrative process [25,26,27]. States and territories lead capacity-building initiatives to help local governments develop and implement hazard mitigation grants [25], which they submit to states and territories as sub-recipients While these sub-national governments play an important intermediary role in the vertical integration of federal funding and local implementation of hazard mitigation grants and associated projects, the understanding of how this process functions and the effectiveness of states and territories in building the capacity of local governments to develop and implement HMA grants remains less understood by researchers and practitioners [25,28,29]. Conclusions, policy recommendations, and future research wrap up the article
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