The National Mitigation Framework is one of a set of national frameworks within the National Preparedness System. Together, these frameworks describe how we build, sustain, and deliver core capabilities in five mission areas—Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery.

The National Mitigation Framework establishes a common platform and forum for coordinating and addressing how the nation manages risk using mitigation capabilities and describes mitigation roles across the whole community.

The National Mitigation Framework addresses the capabilities necessary to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters.

Mitigation requires systematically anticipating and adjusting to trends that could endanger the future of the community. Appropriate choices made before an event can help to manage or reduce long-term risk and potentially reduce response requirements.

The National Mitigation Framework sets out four principles that guide the development and execution of the core capabilities for Mitigation. The first guiding principle that helps develop and support the delivery of Mitigation core capabilities is resilience and sustainability. Resilience is the ability to prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions.

The second guiding principle that helps develop and support the delivery of Mitigation is leadership and locally focused implementation. Mitigation empowers formal and informal local leaders to embrace their ownership of building resilient and sustainable communities.

The third guiding principle that helps develop and support the delivery of Mitigation is engaged partnerships and inclusiveness. Mitigation is advanced through the actions of many groups to collectively reduce risk vulnerability to the whole community.

The fourth guiding principle that helps develop and support the delivery of Mitigation core capabilities is a shared risk-conscious culture. A risk-conscious culture is founded on the shared understanding that future disasters will occur and that every person has a responsibility to prepare for and respond appropriately to these risks.

The National Mitigation Framework strives to improve coordination among all response partners, and through these partnerships, we can work together to help save lives and protect America's communities.

In response to various threats to our nation, preparedness must be at the forefront of any emergency preparation initiative to ensure the safety and security of this country. Whether you are an individual citizen, a member of one of the various levels of government, or work in the private or nonprofit sector, you have a shared responsibility to become engaged in safeguarding the nation from harm using a systematic approach.

The goal of this course is to familiarize you with the National Mitigation Framework, which outlines how the nation can expand its commitment to mitigation and strengthen resilience.

Course Objective:

At the end of this course, the students will be able to describe how the National Mitigation Framework is applied to meet the challenge of building a society that is robust, adaptable and has the capacity for rapid recovery.

This lesson will provide an overview of the National Mitigation Framework.

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to describe the purpose, scope, organization, and underlying doctrine of the National Mitigation Framework.

The National Mitigation Framework, which is part of the National Preparedness System, establishes a common platform and forum for coordinating and addressing how the Nation manages risk using mitigation capabilities and describes mitigation roles across the whole community.

The National Mitigation Framework is one of five frameworks developed to enable achievement of the goal of a secure and resilient nation with the capabilities required to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk across the whole community.

View the National Mitigation Framework (http://www.fema.gov/national-planning-frameworks).

The National Mitigation Framework addresses the capabilities necessary to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters.

Mitigation requires systematically anticipating and adjusting to trends that could endanger the future of the community. Appropriate choices made before an event can help to manage or reduce long-term risk and potentially reduce response requirements.

Further, mitigation during recovery helps strengthen and build a more resilient community to withstand future disasters.

The National Mitigation Framework is inclusive of the whole community with meaningful roles for individuals, nonprofit entities and nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, communities, critical infrastructure owners, and governments.

Those who play a role in mitigation range from an individual making decisions about how to manage the risks in his or her life; to local and tribal jurisdictions and large metropolitan regions working to manage their community members’ risks from threats and hazards; to state, territorial, and Federal agencies administering funding for large, complex programs and projects.

By providing equal access to and use of the necessary knowledge and skills, this Framework seeks to enable the whole community to contribute to and benefit from national preparedness.

More information about whole community preparedness can be found at https://www.fema.gov/whole-community.

The National Preparedness Goal defines the core capabilities necessary to prepare for the specific types of incidents that pose the greatest risk to the security of the Nation.

The National Mitigation Framework describes coordination efforts to deliver the capabilities defined in the Goal.

Mitigation is the thread that permeates the fabric of national preparedness.

The National Mitigation Framework discusses seven core capabilities required for all entities involved in mitigation:

• Planning
• Public Information and Warning
• Operational Coordination
• Community Resilience
• Long-term Vulnerability Reduction
• Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment
• Threats and Hazards Identification

These core capabilities will be covered in Lesson 3.

To better understand how the National Mitigation Framework fits into the overall national preparedness efforts, we need to look at the National Preparedness System and the National Preparedness Goal.

The National Preparedness System (NPS) was developed to provide the approach, resources, and tools to aid the whole community in its preparedness activities to achieve the National Preparedness Goal. Part of this system includes determining what capabilities are needed, how they should be developed and sustained, and how they should be delivered.

The National Preparedness Goal lays out the nationwide preparedness vision and identifies the core capabilities necessary to achieve that vision across the following five mission areas:

• Prevention
• Protection
• Mitigation
• Response
• Recovery

Successful achievement of the National Preparedness Goal will result in a secure and resilient nation with the capabilities required across the whole community to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.

In this course, we are focusing on the Mitigation mission area.

Both the National Preparedness System and National Preparedness Goal discuss the development of capabilities needed to ensure a secure and resilient nation. These capabilities, known as core capabilities, are the way we can measure, describe, and implement our security and resilience techniques.

The National Planning Frameworks elaborate on these capabilities by discussing how to deliver the core capabilities from each mission area, and how to support the delivery of core capabilities from the other mission areas.

Under all five mission areas (Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery) there are a combined total of 32 core capabilities. These capabilities are highly interdependent and require us to use existing preparedness networks and activities, to coordinate and unify efforts, to improve training and exercise programs, to promote innovation, and to ensure that the administrative, finance, and logistics systems are in place to build, sustain, and deliver the capabilities. There are a number of key characteristics of these capabilities that you should remember.

The core capabilities:

• Are distinct critical elements necessary to meet the National Preparedness Goal
• Are essential for the execution of each mission area: Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery
• Provide a common language for preparedness across the whole community
• Are not exclusive to any single level of government or organization and encompass the whole community

More information regarding the National Preparedness System, the National Preparedness Goal, and Core Capabilities can be found in IS-2000: National Preparedness Goal and System: Overview (https://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-2000).

The National Mitigation Framework sets out four principles that guide the development and execution of the core capabilities for Mitigation. These are:

1. Resilience and Sustainability
2. Leadership and Locally Focused Implementation
3. Engaged Partnerships and Inclusiveness and
4. Shared Risk-conscious Culture.

These principles lay the foundation for the Mitigation mission area and the execution of its core capabilities.

On the following screens, we’ll take a closer look at these guiding principles.

The first guiding principle that helps develop and support the delivery of Mitigation core capabilities is resilience and sustainability.

Resilience is the ability to prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions.

The National Mitigation Framework addresses two dimensions of resilience:

1. Resilience involves all aspects of the community including social, health, economic, natural and cultural, technical, and organizational dimensions within a community.
2. Resilience is the ability to withstand and rebound from the impacts of disasters and incident.

Sustainability employs a longer-term approach through plans, policies, and actions that reflect a comprehensive understanding of the economic, social, and environmental systems within a community.

Many communities throughout the nation display best practice examples of resilience and sustainability.

Fresno, California, a city where water availability is a constant issue, developed groundwater recharge ponds to collect storm water. These recharge or retention ponds serve three functions.

• First, water that normally caused street flooding is diverted to these ponds, mitigating street flooding.
• Second, these ponds when dry for most of the year serve as parks with baseball diamonds, soccer fields, playgrounds, and picnic areas.
• Third, when the recharge/retention ponds fill with storm water the ponds act to filter and replenish the groundwater supply, which through city wells supply water to residences and businesses in the city.

Some communities are using the technique of biowales as an alternative to storm sewers. The biowales with moderately sloping sides filters storm water allowing the water to purify by way of infiltration back into the ground water supply. Superfluous water can flow either to surface water systems or to recharge ponds through the biowales.

The second guiding principle that helps develop and support the delivery of Mitigation is leadership and locally focused implementation.

Effective, ongoing mitigation efforts are led at the local level. Mitigation empowers formal and informal local leaders to embrace their ownership of building resilient and sustainable communities.

Leaders at the state, tribal, territorial, insular area, and Federal levels support local leadership.

The third guiding principle that helps develop and support the delivery of Mitigation is engaged partnerships and inclusiveness.

Community partnerships working together reduce risk and vulnerability for the whole community.

These partnerships may include, but are not limited to:

• All levels of government
• Faith-based organizations
• Nonprofit organizations
• Private/corporate entities
• Advocacy groups
• Community associations
• Academia
• Professional groups
• Neighbors

The fourth guiding principle that helps develop and support the delivery of Mitigation core capabilities is a shared risk-conscious culture.

A shared risk-conscious culture is aware of the fact that the future is not free of risks.

Community leaders evaluate a wide variety of threats and hazards in order to assess risk.

Through a shared risk-conscious culture a community can achieve resilience.

Risk is the potential for an unwanted outcome resulting from an incident, event, or occurrence.

Risk is measured in terms of likelihood and consequences.

Mitigation is intended to minimize risks associated with threats and hazards.

No single threat or hazard exists in isolation. As an example, a hurricane can lead to flooding, dam failures, and hazardous materials spill.

To support this effort, the Strategic National Risk Assessment (SNRA) was developed to analyze risks to the nation large and small.

The SNRA analyzes the risks at a national level.

• Contributes to our shared understanding of the full range of threats, hazards, and challenges facing our nation as well as greater visibility of long-term risk trends
• Will be refined to integrate information from across the whole community
• Provides information for prioritizing preparedness activities at the national level and informing risk assessment efforts at every level of government

Strategic National Risk Assessment indicates that a wide range of threats and hazards continue to pose a significant risk to the Nation, affirming the need for an all-hazards, capability-based approach to preparedness planning.

Climate change has the potential to increase risk. Examples of increased risk include:

• Rising sea levels
• Increasingly powerful storms
• Increase in the number of droughts
• Increase in the number of wildfires

Cybersecurity poses its own unique challenges. In order to meet threats to cybersecurity, the whole community must consider integrating cyber mitigation tasks throughout the Mitigation core capabilities.

We have reached the end of this lesson. In this lesson, we described the purpose, scope, organization, and underlying doctrine of the National Mitigation Framework. We discussed:

• Whole community preparedness.
• National Preparedness System.
• National Preparedness Goal.
• Core capabilities.
• Guiding Principles for Mitigation.
• Risk basis.

In the next lesson, we will discuss the roles and responsibilities of those involved in the Mitigation effort.