How can zoning mitigate hazards

Effective mitigation planning can break the cycle of disaster damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage. Hazard mitigation plans can address a range of natural and human-caused hazards. They typically include four key elements: 1 a risk assessment, 2 capability assessment, 3 mitigation strategy, and 4 plan maintenance procedures. Plans can be developed for a single community or as a multi-jurisdictional plan that includes multiple communities across a county or larger multi-county planning region.

Local hazard mitigation planning did not become a common or standard practice for most communities until the passage of the U. Disaster Mitigation Act of , which amended federal legislation to require the development of a hazard mitigation plan as a condition for local jurisdictions to receive certain types of non-emergency disaster assistance, including funding for mitigation projects.

Today, more than 27, communities nationwide have adopted local hazard mitigation plans in compliance with the planning laws, regulations, and guidance promulgated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA.

To maintain their compliance and eligibility for grant funding these plans must be updated and approved by FEMA every five years. Similar to other local community plans, hazard mitigation plans are oriented toward anticipating and preparing for future conditions or impacts rather than responding to events as they occur.

Perhaps even more important for local governments is the horizontal coordination and integration of hazard mitigation plans with other plans, policies, and regulations for guiding community development.

Describing a process for doing so is a requirement for local hazard mitigation plans, and in recent years both FEMA and the American Planning Association APA have distributed specific guidance for planners on this topic see Additional Resources. When developed and implemented in concert with land use plans, zoning ordinances, or other local planning mechanisms, the local mitigation plan can be a powerful tool for reducing community vulnerability to known hazards.

Moreover, in cases where a community may not have effective plans or regulations already in place, the hazard mitigation plan can become a critical document for guiding future decision and policy making. Many communities have already prepared and adopted a local hazard mitigation plan, and often have done so as part of a multi-jurisdictional planning effort. Regardless, the responsibility for plan implementation lies with each jurisdiction. Community-specific risk assessments, actions, and procedures in support of the overall goals for the planning area must be included as part of the mitigation strategy and plan maintenance elements of the plan.

A national training program, supported by the federal government and fully integrated with the preparedness training proposed here, should be developed for this purpose. Its curriculum would include land-use planning, zoning, building codes and regulations, tax incentives, and nonstructural mitigation measures.

Case studies from throughout the nation and around the world should be included. Mitigation training should be highly interactive, reflecting real problems and issues. For example, how can hazard and risk data be used to promote mitigation at the community level? How can hazardprone land be used in ways that are important to communities but less vulnerable to natural disasters?

How can a local emergency manager or other official develop a cost-effective mitigation program? How can mitigation policy and practice be moved up on the political agenda? How can local commitment to hazard reduction be developed? How can historic structures be cost-effectively protected to avoid expensive salvage attempts following a disaster? These and other issues need to be addressed in a nationwide training program. Hazard-specific research.

Recent disasters have demonstrated the benefits of mitigation efforts while pointing out the need for research to improve mitigation practice. Although all hazards would benefit from such study, research agendas for earthquakes, landslides, and extreme winds are illustrated below. Earthquakes: There is a need to complete a national seismic monitoring network and establish a cooperative international program in strong-motion measurement and data analysis.

Local networks should be established, as needed, to determine the effects of local site conditions on ground motion and the relationship between specific ground motion parameters and the degree of structural damage. The behavior of structures founded on different soil types is another area of research opportunity.

The damage distribution in the Marina District during the Loma Prieta earthquake dramatized the effects of soil properties on structures and underscores the need for additional research in this area. Research is needed to develop cost-effective methods for strengthening existing buildings and structures, especially unreinforced masonry and brittle reinforced-concrete buildings. Federal and state governments should encourage the development and implementation of active and passive control systems and other new techniques to improve the seismic resistance of both existing and new buildings.

Additional research should be conducted to improve techniques for controlling damage to nonstructural elements such as ceilings, windows, the electrical supply, and domestic gas pipes. Research to improve the design and construction of lifeline systems should be accelerated. Better understanding of the conditions that generate landslides would significantly improve hazard and risk assessments by local jurisdictions.

Research is needed to develop designs that mitigate ground deformation and damage to structures, provide a technical base for mitigation measures such as landslide zoning, and test and evaluate innovative landslide stabilization techniques. The application of new techniques in satellite remote sensing, geophysics, and geotechnical engineering for delineating landslide hazard areas should be accelerated.

Research is needed to identify the economic, political, and social processes that encourage or impede landslide mitigation programs. This information could be valuable when landslides are considered in insurance programs and local planning and zoning, including the location of key facilities.

Extreme winds: Knowledge about wind-force effects on buildings is critical to developing wind speed provisions in building codes and designing wind-resistant structures. Research in this area is lacking; measurements of wind speeds at the height of mid- to high-rise buildings are rarely available. The stucco facade of this building shattered like an eggshell as lava flowing around the base of the three-story structure applied such pressure that the walls shifted and collapsed.

A national wind hazard reduction program, modeled on the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program, is needed to improve building performance in high winds and severe weather. The program should emphasize mitigation. Schools and medical facilities, in particular, should be subject to stringent building codes. High winds can cause substantial property damage and economic loss.

Research needs to focus on whether current mitigation practice, including the wind-resistance provisions of building codes, is responsive to the potential magnitude of the problem. Overcoming resistance to mitigation. Barriers to the adoption of mitigation measures need to be clearly identified and innovative strategies developed to overcome resistance.

Success stories, computer models, and simulations should be components of such a program. Real experiences can provide both insight into the factors that contribute to successful mitigation programs and the means for communities to capitalize on opportunities that follow a disaster.

Computer simulations and other tools that incorporate the tax base, revenues, loss estimates, and other key variables can provide government and industry with information critical to their decision-making.

Simulations of past recovery and reconstruction efforts, including decisions and trade-offs, may contribute to appreciation of the value of mitigation. Response and recovery need to be a coordinated effort of local, state, and federal government, private voluntary organizations, and community volunteers. During and after Hurricane Hugo, U.

The legal binding of hazard zones depends not only on the potential occurrence of hazards, but also on land planning regulations and respective responsibilities in the case of the occurrence of a hazard.

In some countries, a Skip to main content Skip to table of contents. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. Encyclopedia of Natural Hazards Edition. Editors: Peter T. Contents Search. Reference work entry First Online: 21 January In addition to steering development away from flood-sensitive areas through the long-range land use plan component, comprehensive plans can also include broader goals and objectives that are related and complementary to flood reduction, such as encouraging green infrastructure and respecting natural topography.

Planning and floodplain management efforts are built on a description of the hazard and its impact on development and the impact of development on natural floodplain functions. While some communities rely solely on their Flood Insurance Rate Map FIRMs to determine what their risk is or react to the impacts of the most recent disaster, communities that have invested in enhanced floodplain mapping should look to those mapping efforts to guide the assessment of their disaster risk.

It is important to account for not only current risk from a variety of hazards but also to look at how that risk may change over time as flooding and erosion impacts change with changes to sea level and precipitation patterns. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has created projected sea level rise maps for the entire United States coast that can help visualize what future sea levels and storm events might look like.

The National Climate Assessment made general projections for land use change over time as well as projections for changes in precipitation. Wherever possible, locally down-scaled information should be used to get a more refined view of what the future may hold. Hazard mitigation plans are focused on actions that are intended to reduce flood losses in a community, such as identifying areas where buy-outs of flood prone structures may occur.

A local hazard mitigation required for local governments to be eligible to receive hazard mitigation assistance from the federal government, principally in the form of a few grant programs run by FEMA.