Information gathered from steps 1 through 3 need to be summarized so that the community can understand the most significant risks and vulnerabilities. This summarized information can be used:

• as the foundation for mitigation strategy.
• to communicate findings to elected officials and other stakeholders to support their decision making.

The plan must provide an overall summary of each jurisdiction’s vulnerability to the identified hazards. One recommended approach is to develop problem statements.

Example of Summarizing Vulnerability Using Problem Statements

• The planning team may evaluate the impacts and develop problem statements for each hazard, as well as identify the problems or issues that apply to all hazards.
• Plan updates will need to revise the problems statements to reflect the current risk assessment. This may include developing new statements and removing or revising ones that are no longer valid because mitigation projects have addressed the risk or other conditions have changed.