National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program

Development of the 2009–2013 Strategic Plan 2006 Public Review and Comment

2006 Public Review and Comment on the 2001–2005 Strategic Plan

In 2006, the NEHRP agencies initiated the development of the 2009–2013 Strategic Plan (PDF 1.3MB) with a review of the 2001–2005 Strategic Plan (PDF 217KB).

On April 17, 2006, the NEHRP agencies hosted an open forum at the Quake '06 conference, during which stakeholders were given opportunities to comment regarding the 2001–2005 Strategic Plan and possible revisions to it. Following is a compilation of the various comments from the forum, listed largely in the order they were made.

• Need to include community-wide resilience, which involves systems approach.
• Need to incorporate a multi-hazard approach for program—tie designs for mitigating all hazards together in one framework.
• Must capitalize on opportunities (e.g. national attention brought on when major earthquakes occur) as they arise—need to recognize/acknowledge branding.
• Need coherence and coordination between NEHRP agencies and state/local partners.
• Need improved program marketing.
• Must pay attention to socioeconomic issues, which must be an intimate part of any successful hazard mitigation program.
• Education is very important aspect of any successful hazard mitigation program. Very important to interact with state/local agencies. Must educate both professional and general communities.
• Need measurable goals/performance measures.
• Should incorporate national annualized loss studies that are being updated now.
• Issue of seismic rehabilitation/retrofit/strengthening for existing structures (FEMA 273, FEMA 356, and ASCE 41) is very important, and there are many needs for NEHRP initiatives for improving current states-of-art/practice. Are there plans to assist ASCE develop new data/guidance?
• Need to develop organized national archives on national earthquake experiences.
• Connections between NEHRP agencies and state/local agencies must be established at high levels (not just working levels) within respective bureaucracies.
• Need more emphasis on impacts of remote sensing technologies.
• Must include community-wide vulnerability sciences (shed "20th Century approach" for "21st Century approach," new strategic plan needs to be revolutionary, not evolutionary!).
• When can 2000 census-based version of FEMA loss study (updated FEMA 366, which was based on 1990 census data) be expected?
• FEMA's annualized building loss study is old and needs updating.
• Must consider broad interdependent networks in reformulating strategic plan. Business continuity was mentioned—need to address challenge of information networks.
• Build into new plan some aspect of self-examination of program effects on communities and areas.
• What involvement does NEHRP have in post-event recovery?
• What is NEHRP's ultimate goal? Where will it end?" Where will it go? It is understandable that the NEHRP agencies would look at adopting an "evolutionary" approach to developing the next version of the Plan, rather than a "revolutionary" approach. Some of the previous comments reflect a need for fresh perspective in Plan development. An appropriate "middle ground" approach might be to add a fifth goal that looks ahead at developing the "revolutionary" Plan that does address issues such as disaster-resilient communities, use of scenarios, etc. This goal would involve a comprehensive, broad-based review of NEHRP and the development of forward-looking Plans for the 2010-2020 time period.

Following the Quake ’06 conference, NEHRP conducted a 30-day public review in May 2006, to allow the earthquake professional community to comment on the 2001-2005 Strategic Plan. The NEHRP Secretariat received a number of Strategic Plan Comments (PDF 228KB) during the public comment period.

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