Project Description:
Currently, there are 26 hazard mitigation districts across the state of Maryland, consisting of the 23 Maryland counties, the cities of Baltimore and Annapolis, along with the town of Ocean City. Each district is responsible for developing its own hazard mitigation plans, which detail how each district has identified and evaluated the natural and man-made hazards affecting its communities, along with how they plan to mitigate their effects.
Each district develops its plan independently, and no centralized mechanism organizes the individual mitigation actions. Additionally, each plan uses its own language, definitions, and categories to describe aspects of hazard mitigation. This has hindered the ability of state agencies, such as the Maryland Department of Emergency Management (MDEM), to evaluate the current status and progress of hazard mitigation statewide.
Our team has developed a single set of definitions, categories, and parameters used to describe key aspects of hazard mitigation. We organized roughly 1,700 individual projects and entered them into a single tracking mechanism based on the parameters our team developed. Additionally, our team identified trends in a series of categories, including funding sources, hazard types, and investments in critical infrastructure and facilities on a regional and statewide basis.
