Lesson Overview

Now that you have learned how to start the planning process and conduct a risk assessment, let’s discuss the steps to review and assess mitigation capabilities.

After completing this lesson, you should be able to:

• List the purpose of the capability assessment.
• Provide examples of each category of capabilities.

• Every Tribe has unique capabilities to accomplish mitigation.

Reviewing capabilities helps you identify what resources are currently available to reduce losses and where there are gaps that you could fill through the planning process. The capability assessment is most beneficial when developing and reviewing mitigation strategies. The assessment can help you understand how the strategies should be prioritized or implemented.

• The Capability Assessment helps to identify what resources exist, and where there might be gaps.

Each type of capability may include laws, regulations, policies, programs, staff, funding, or cooperative agreements. They should be specific to your pre- and post-disaster policies, programs, and resources, but they may go beyond mitigation. Include a description of any capabilities your Tribe has that help make the planning area more resilient.

The primary types of Tribal capabilities in mitigation planning are:

• Planning and Regulatory
• Administrative and Technical
• Financial
• Education and Outreach

The planning team may also identify additional types of capabilities relevant to mitigation planning.

Planning and regulatory capabilities help provide a legal basis for mitigation planning. Having land use plans, building codes, ordinances, and plans in place helps to set guidelines for the mitigation planning efforts. These can also help to provide the basis for preventing development in hazard-prone areas, or by requiring resilient infrastructure where able.

Examples of policies and programs that guide development include:

• Land use plans and development standards
• Building codes
• Ordinances
• Environmental review process
• Emergency response and operations plans
• Community wildfire prevention plans
• Comprehensive plans
• Transportation plans
• Vegetation management plans

Ask the following questions to identify your Tribe’s planning and regulatory capabilities:

• What kinds of plans has your Tribe completed?
• Are there any Tribal laws or ordinances (e.g., not building in the floodplain, crop rotation, environmental protections, historic or cultural preservation) that mitigate hazards or support keeping people safe?
• What cultural practices or beliefs have been passed on by your Tribe through generations and relate to or translate into actions for development or non-development in high-hazard areas?
• How do you protect your critical facilities such as police stations, fire stations, schools, and hospitals from natural hazards?
• How do you notify Tribal members about emergencies and evacuations?

Additional planning and regulatory capabilities may include, but are not limited to:

• Vegetation management plans
• Water quality control plans
• Floodplain management plans
• Climate adaptation plans
• Watershed management plans
• Comprehensive plans
• Transportation plans
• Budgetary plans

Ask the following questions to help determine your Tribe’s administrative and technical capabilities:

• Which Tribal staff are available to support the mitigation actions?
• Does the staff available have the capability and training to implement mitigation?
• Is there a need for outside expertise and resources to implement actions?
• What technical assistance is needed for your Tribe to implement actions?
• Is your staff trained to write and administer grants?
• Are there agreements in place with other Tribes or non-Tribal agencies that provide regular administrative or technical assistance?
• Does your Tribe retain any outside consultants to support planning or other technical work?
• Does your Tribe work with any foundations or philanthropic organizations who are potential supporters of hazard mitigation?

Administrative and technical capabilities refer to the staff, the staff’s skills, and tools that a community has for mitigation planning and implementing specific mitigation actions, such as:

• Engineers
• Planners
• GIS analysts
• Building inspectors
• Emergency managers
• Natural resource managers
• Grant writers

It also refers to the ability to access and coordinate these resources effectively. Think about the types of personnel available to each Tribe and the public and private sector resources that may be accessed to implement mitigation activities in your community, and their level of knowledge and technical expertise.

The planning team can identify resources available through other entities, such as counties, special districts or other Federal agencies which may be able to provide technical assistance to communities with limited resources.

Questions to consider when looking at these capabilities:

• Which Tribal staff are available to support the mitigation actions?
• Does the staff available have the capability and training to implement mitigation?
• Is there a need for outside expertise and resources to implement actions?
• Does your Tribe have the physical resources available that could be used during implementation of mitigation actions (e.g., a bulldozer, backhoe, or heavy construction equipment)?

Financial capabilities are the resources that a community or Tribe has access to or is eligible to use to fund mitigation actions. Resources available to fund mitigation actions include:

• Operating budgets
• Grants resources
• Capital projects

Some mitigation actions, such as outreach efforts, require little to no cost other than staff time and existing budgets. Other actions, such as the acquisition of flood prone properties, could require a substantial commitment from external funding sources.

Describe Existing Funding Sources in Your Plan

The plan shall describe the Tribe’s existing funding sources for hazard mitigation actions and/or projects, including a general discussion of how the tribe has used:

(1) Non-FEMA (Tribal, private, or other Federal) funds for hazard mitigation projects; and

(2) FEMA mitigation funding, including the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities (BRIC), Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA), Public Assistance Categories C-G (PA C-G), and Fire Management Assistance Grants (FMAG).

Potential funding sources for mitigation actions are listed here. This is not an exhaustive list and other sources may be available.

• Department of Homeland Security: FEMA and other DHS agencies
• Bureau of Indian Affairs
• Environmental Protection Agency
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Bureau of Land Management

Ask the following questions to help determine your Tribe’s education and outreach capabilities:

• What funding mechanisms are currently in place?
• What have been some successes in program funding?

Education and outreach capabilities and programs may include methods already in place that could be used to implement mitigation activities and communicate hazard-related information. Examples include fire safety programs that fire departments deliver to students at local schools; participation in community programs, such as Firewise or Storm Ready; and activities conducted as part of hazard awareness campaigns, such as Tornado or Flood Awareness Month. Some communities have individuals designated as public information or communication leads to handle outreach initiatives.

Programs that implement mitigation and communicate risk include:

• School programs
• Firewise communities
• Storm Ready communities
• Hazard awareness campaigns (e.g., Spring breakup)
• Community newsletter
• Local radio

Ask the following questions to help determine your Tribe’s education and outreach capabilities:

• What venues does your Tribe use for outreach activities (e.g., gatherings, feasts, festivals, celebrations, meetings) to communicate with Tribal members?
• How does your Tribe communicate new Tribal policies, ordinances, or resolutions with Tribal members (e.g., word of mouth, meetings, email)? Can those methods be used to communicate about mitigation?
• What new or additional outreach efforts would need to be considered to get the most public participation and support for mitigation?

When looking at capabilities, it is important that they be both catalogued and evaluated for their overall effectiveness.

For each capability, check how well they might support mitigation projects. It is entirely possible that some programs, policies and regulations may be unpopular or under criticism, which is why it is important to look through all of them.

The capability assessment provides a critical opportunity to get everyone in your community on the same page, and to strengthen overall cooperation between departments, leaders, and Tribal members.

• Describe how your capabilities help your Tribe reduce risk.
• Use the planning process to strengthen your opportunities and lessen the impact of the challenges.

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is a program created by Congress that enables property owners in participating communities to purchase insurance protection from the government against losses from flooding.

Jurisdictions that participate in the NFIP are required to conduct these types of activities for mitigating floods:

• Floodplain Mapping
• Floodplain Management
• Flood Insurance

In this lesson, we discussed step 4 in the mitigation planning process: assessing current mitigation capabilities.

The Mitigation Strategy process assesses risks and then seeks actions to address them. This starts with a review of the Tribe’s capabilities. This lesson has shown you how to begin the process for developing a mitigation strategy that reflects the results of the risk assessment and capabilities of the community.

Read the Fictional Roaring River Capability Assessment case study (HB, p. 30), and then answer these questions:

1) What capabilities are covered in the report?

2) How would you rate the current capabilities of the tribe for implementing mitigation actions?

In the exercise packet, use the “Capability Assessment Worksheet” to assess your Tribe’s planning and regulatory, administrative and technical, financial, and education and outreach capabilities. Your Tribe may not have each kind of capability, but you should complete the tables and questions in the worksheet as completely as possible.