Practitioners Meeting

Areyouready

The Natural Hazards Center is pleased to announce that the National Hazard Mitigation Association (NHMA) will once again hold their annual NHMA Practitioners Meeting virtually on July 14, 2022 following the Natural Hazards Workshop.


Engaging Low Capacity Communities with Practical and Equitable Risk Reduction and Resilience Solutions and Support

The theme of this year’s meeting is Engaging Low Capacity Communities with Practical and Equitable Risk Reduction and Resilience Solutions and Support. This theme was chosen to highlight innovative and practical community resilience concepts and initiatives. Program sessions and workshops will focus on fresh insights, broad visions, and inclusive management techniques that create fundamental change ensuring long-term resilience in communities that typically do not have the capacity to address, invest in and implement risk reduction and resilience measures. It also reflects that mitigation and resiliency measures take place at the community level—it is therefore imperative that we facilitate and fully engage the participation of the whole community in developing practical solutions.

As a nation, we must pursue a new strategy that is devolutionary in nature by working to enable states to invest in engagement hubs that would leverage existing and emergent collaborative institutions, mechanisms, and processes that will help provide sustained support for low-capacity communities. In this process, low capacity communities will achieve economies of scale by utilizing state sponsored GIS databases, threat models for the state (interstate and inter-jurisdiction), established processes / procedures, staff augmentation, and capability / capacity building. The jurisdictions can produce actionable hazard mitigation plans within their comprehensive planning process, which will propel their efforts towards resiliency beyond just meeting Federal regulatory requirements.

To support this effort, Land/Sea Grant universities, as well as other public universities, have a tremendous opportunity to expand their current mission reach and support to include capability and capacity building within their state, especially with low-capacity communities. Many of these institutions have offices across their respective states and they are partners that communities trust.

Discussions will encourage thoughts on how practitioners can work with academic institutions to develop a “front-door” for communities to access assistance, support and solutions to their identified disaster risk reduction needs. The roles of education, awareness, and commitment to whole community resilience can affect changes at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial level. Through active engagement on these topics, the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association hopes to build on the momentum of mitigation and resilience activities and measures, recently increased federal funding, collaboration, networking, and the goals of true convergence.

Meeting participants have the opportunity to learn from each other and some of the nation’s brightest mitigation subject matter experts. We will collectively tackle difficult issues facing low capacity and underserved communities, but also discuss potential strategies and solutions that can help these communities develop implementable and measurable risk reduction measures and projects.

This meeting will feature an opening plenary session and a series of discussions focused on key elements of a potential strategy that practitioners can support in partnership with collaborating agencies, organizations and the private sector. Topics will include but not be limited to:

  • Developing Engagement Hubs to Provide “Front Door” to Communities Needing Lifecycle Disaster Risk Reduction Support
  • Developing Implementable Hazard Mitigation Plans for Low Capacity Communities
  • Addressing Key Policy Initiatives to Enable Equitable Disaster Assistance
  • Developing a Concept for Mitigation Planning and Collaboration Between Communities and Public Universities Through Service Based Learning
  • Developing a Watershed Resilience Approach Using the Infrastructure Resilience Planning Framework Methodology
  • Developing the Potential Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Support of Improving Low Capacity Community Resilience

Full Schedule Available Here


2022 NHMA Practitioners Meeting Registration Rates

General Registration
$50

Students
$25

Retired Professionals
$25

All participants, including those in presenting roles, must register for the meeting. Speaker discounts are not available for the Practitioners Meeting.


Questions about the Practitioners Meeting can be addressed to NHMA President Thomas Hughes at thughes@pa.gov. For more information on the NHMA, please visit the NHMA website.