LMS Guidebook Supplement, Vulnerability Assessment, Part 2
STEP 5

PRIORITIZING MITIGATION INITIATIVES

The need to prioritize implementation of initiatives

The financial and personnel resources that will be available for implementation of the hazard mitigation initiatives incorporated into a Local Mitigation Strategy will be limited. Because of this, the Working Group will want to establish the priority for implementation of each initiative. This will enable the participants in the strategy, as well as outside agencies and organizations, to know which initiatives will be first to be implemented when resources do become available.

Procedures for prioritizing initiatives

The Working Group needs to develop and maintain procedures for prioritization of any mitigation initiatives intended for incorporation into the Local Mitigation Strategy. Participants in strategy development will want to be confident that the most meritorious projects and programs will be given the most attention. Effective procedures, developed in advance, are necessary to accomplish this objective.

Anticipating the uses of the prioritized list

Depending on a county’s size, level of development, and risk exposure, there could be many mitigation initiatives listed in the plan that need to be assigned a priority for implementation. Under such circumstances, it may be very helpful for implementation of the strategy if the Working Group prepares its list of initiatives in a manner that can take optimum advantages of funding opportunities that may arise in the future. Such opportunities may be for specialized programs, for certain levels of government or types of organizations, or to address certain types of hazards. To attain this degree of flexibility in the use of the list of prioritized projects, it will be helpful if the Working Group makes the effort to develop a computer database is capable of correlating the key characteristics of each proposed initiative, including its priority. The Working Group would then be better prepared to respond quickly to funding opportunities.

With such a computer database, for structural projects, the Working Group could seek funding for the highest priority initiative that fits the restrictions or limitations of the financial resources available at the time implementation is desired. For example, with this approach, if funding for flood control projects by municipalities should become available, the Working Group could apply for its highest priority flood project sponsored by a municipality. This could be done regardless of the priorities assigned to proposals addressing other hazards or sponsored by organizations other than municipalities.

For many non-structural, policy-based initiatives, funding itself may not be the key implementation issue of concern to the Working Group. In these cases, prioritization of policy-shaping initiatives, such as changes to growth management plans or land development codes, can be used to demonstrate to the community the initiative’s importance, and/or to define the emphasis and scheduling of implementation efforts. For those non-structural initiatives that do require funding for implementation, such as development of training programs, the priority given initiatives can be used to make funding decisions.

A fundamental purpose in the prioritization of initiatives is to allow for local decision-making regarding which mitigation projects or programs are the most important and should be implemented first. By establishing such priorities, applications to state and federal funding programs need not be competitive among jurisdictions from within a single county, which otherwise would place the prioritization decision with the funding agency to select among applicants.

Criteria to consider in the prioritization of initiatives

Overall, for most counties, it will be desirable to have an approach to prioritizing initiatives that considers all relevant criteria important to the community and influential to the success of the implementation of the initiatives. There will be both tangible and intangible factors that a Working Group may wish to include in its procedures for prioritization of initiatives.

There are several options or mix of options that could be considered for an approach to prioritization:

Using the benefit to cost ratio

In Step Four, an approach to developing a benefit to cost ratio was suggested, and this approach could include a method to adjust the ratio to account for intangible values such as protection of health, safety and important environmental resources. The benefit to cost ratio for all proposed initiatives, especially if completely quantified as suggested in Step Four and incorporated safety, health and environmental considerations, could be the sole criteria used to prioritize mitigation initiatives. In this approach, the higher the ratio - the higher the priority.

However, a Working Group should recognize that there are other criteria that may need to be considered in assigning the priority to an initiative. For example, while an initiative may have a very favorable benefit to cost ratio, if implemented, it may be in violation of local, state or federal environmental laws and regulations. In this case, implementation of the initiative could be expected to either not be successful or at least highly problematic and time consuming. Therefore, it may not warrant a high priority for implementation, and complete reliance on the benefit implementation, and complete reliance on the benefit to cost ratio for prioritization would not have addressed this issue.

Prioritizing based on schedules for implementation

In many ways, the priority for initiatives will reflect their urgency for implementation. Initiatives that would be considered high priority would be anticipated to be those whose implementation is desired in the near term, such as within the first year. Many key non-structural, policy-oriented initiatives would be expected to fall in this category. Lesser priority initiatives could be deferred to the second or third year, etc.

Another set of prioritized initiatives could be reserved for the time frame immediately after a Presidential declared disaster, when major sources of funding can become available. This approach would nevertheless require the Working Group to define which initiatives would be dependent on this source of funding, and for which funding applications would be submitted when funding became available.

Using subjective judgment without pre-designated criteria

With this approach, the Working Group relies on the subjective judgment of its members as a group to assign priorities to individual initiatives. Members would "vote" on the priority that is to be assigned to each initiative. One way to do this would be to ask each member to vote for their "top" five (or six or seven, etc.) initiatives from the entire list assembled. The final priorities would then be based on the number of votes each initiative receives, with the highest receiving top priority, etc.

This approach emphasizes local judgment in the selection process, and intuitively incorporates local values and desires. It would most likely be effective if there were a limited number of initiatives that needed to be prioritized, and that competition between local jurisdictions during the process could be avoided.

Using a ranking approach based on pre-selected criteria

The Working Group could use an approach based on assigning a qualitative or quantitative priority rank to each initiative. A qualitative approach would be to assign an initiative a "high,’ "medium" or "low" priority, based on pre-selected criteria. A quantitative approach would be to assign a numeric value based upon pre-selected criteria.

The selection of the criteria for this approach to prioritization is the key to its effectiveness. The criteria must be responsive to the Working Group’s needs and values, as well as reasonably accurate indicators of the ability to implement the initiative.

Quantification in the prioritization process

It may be very advantageous to use a quantified method for assigning priority to an initiative. While any prioritization method is very likely to rest on assumptions and value judgments by the participants, by assigning numbers to the specific, per-selected criteria used for the evaluation these can be totaled to calculate a overall priority rank for each initiative.

The use of quantification in the prioritization process offers several advantages, including:

• Avoiding having large numbers of initiatives of equal priorities (e.g., numerous "high" priority initiatives),

• Being more amenable to listing priorities in a computerized database, to facilitate strategy implementation, and

• Minimizing concerns regarding bias or lack of objectivity in the prioritization process.

Implementing the prioritization process

Once the Working Group has agreed upon and established the desired prioritization process, the proposed mitigation initiatives can be addressed and assigned the correct priority for implementation. If the Working Group has followed the suggestions for calculating a benefit to cost ratio in Step Four, then any mitigation initiative with a ratio greater than +1.0 would be considered for prioritization, evaluated and a priority ranking assigned. Upon completion, the assigned priorities would be documented in the Local Mitigation Strategy when issued by the Working Group.

The assignment of the prioritization process needs to be in accord with the prioritization procedures established in the Working Group’s procedures. These procedures would assign responsibility for implementation of the prioritization process in a manner suitable for the specific county and the membership of the Working Group. Several options for assigning responsibility can be considered:

• The entire membership of the Working Group,
• A subset of the Working Group, such as a particular subcommittee, or
• Each individual local government participating.

Example of a prioritization scheme:

The following matrix format illustrates one example of several options for a quantified approach using pre-selected criteria that could be considered by a Working Group. Each Working Group must select its own approach to prioritizing projects and define that approach in its procedures. If the example here were followed, the population numbers, dollar values, and other quantified factors under each rank value must be adjusted to be appropriate to the size of the county, the number of jurisdictions, and the policies of the Working Group.

This matrix is used by comparing the proposed initiative with each of the descriptions for each criteria category, and the "best fit" selected. Then, the sum of the numbers selected under each criterion is totaled to derive the priority rank for the initiative. The higher the resulting number, the higher the priority of the initiative.

Description of the priority rank value

Criteria Category	4	3	2	1	0
Population Benefited	Over 150,000	76,000 to 150,000	26,000 to 75,000	11,000 to 25,000	Under 10,000
Percentage of Jurisdiction Benefited	76 to 100%	51 to 75%	26 to 50%	6 to 25%	Less than 5%
Health and Safety Considerations	Benefit several jurisdictions (over 250,000 people) and/or major portions of County population	Benefit between 50,000 and 250,000 people	Benefit between 1,000 and 50,000 people	Benefit less than 1,000 people	No anticipated benefit
Estimated Cost of Implementing the Initiative	No quantifiable cost	Less than $250,000	Between $250,000 and $1,000,000	Between $1,000,000 and $5,000,000	Over $5,000,000
Cost Impact of the Initiative	No quantifiable cost impact	Less than $250,000	$250,000 to $1,000,000	$1,000,000 to $5,000,000	Over $5,000,000
Benefit to Cost Ratio	More than +5.0	+4.0 to +4.9	+3.0 to +3.9	+2.0 to +2.9	+1.0 to +1.9
Probability of Community Acceptance	Likely to be endorsed by the entire community	Benefits only those directly affected and not adversely affecting others	Somewhat controversial with special interest groups or small % of community	Strongly opposed by special interest groups or significant % of community	Strongly opposed by most of general population
Probability of Funding	Potential funding sources not readily apparent	Only funding source is post-mitigation funds	Funding could be through matching local funds with others	Funding can probably be obtained through local long term budgeting	Funding can probably be obtained through local short term budgeting
Feasibility of Implementation	Relatively easy to put in place within a year	Not anticipated to be difficult	Somewhat difficult due to complex requirements	Difficult due to significantly complex requirements	Very difficult due to extremely difficult requirements
Consistency with other Plans and Programs	Initiative included in several other plans and programs	Initiative included in two other plans and programs	Initiative included in one other plan or program	Initiative not included in other plan or program	Initiative not consistent with other plans or programs

Step 6
Incorporating the Initiatives into the Strategy