Assessing the Quality of Rural Hazard Mitigation Plans in the Southeastern United States

Abstract

High-quality hazard mitigation plans may improve postdisaster outcomes in many ways, including establishing a community fact base and providing rationales for protective policies and actions. Hazard mitigation plans in eighty-four rural counties in the Southeastern United States were scored using an established protocol. To supplement quantitative data, twenty-one key informant interviews were conducted in a subsample of seven counties. While overall plan quality was poor, informants identified areas for improvement. Understanding potential shortcomings of rural hazard mitigation plans can help communities identify areas to direct limited resources to improve plans, particularly in communities that self-identify as highly vulnerable to disasters.

Keywords

methods neighborhood planning sustainability

Introduction

Rural counties face unique challenges in regard to disaster vulnerability and resilience. For example, rural counties have relatively higher poverty rates, an aging population base (Glasgow 2000), and higher rates of age-adjusted mortality, disability, and chronic disease (Jones et al. 1990). Rural counties tend to be more geographically and socially isolated (Saenz and Peacock 2006), and typically have fewer resources (Flora and Flora 1992). As such, rural communities may be at a particular disadvantage when it comes to planning and preparing for disasters (Berke et al. 2010a; Coppola 2011; Oxfam America 2009; Cross 2001; Miller and Simile 1992; Morrow and Peacock 1997; Saenz and Peacock 2006; Tootle 2007).

Hazard mitigation planning may offer a means of accounting for the preparedness vulnerabilities of rural communities. Although many dimensions of disaster planning and preparedness exist (Tierney, Lindell, and Perry 2001), local hazard mitigation plans (HMPs) play a singular role in guiding community accountability for the vulnerability of human populations as well as the built and natural environments (Berke et al. 2010b; Godschalk et al. 1998). An HMP may provide a number of benefits to rural populations, including (1) the establishment of a community fact base to help inform and educate stakeholders regarding the vulnerabilities of rural communities; (2) rationales for suggested policies and actions; and (3) a means to identify opportunities for positive change. A high-quality HMP combines the best available scientific data with the ordinary knowledge of local stakeholders while aligning mitigation policies with other community plans and programs aimed at preserving or improving local conditions, including economic development, housing and the environment (Baer 1997; Berke and Godschalk 2009).

The process of developing such a plan, one that proactively assesses risk and steers future development away from hazardous areas, may even help raise civic awareness and build consensus in a rural community. When planners pursue more participatory objectives, such as “fostering citizen influence in hazard mitigation,” the resulting HMPs have 76 percent more mitigation measures when compared with jurisdictions that do not include participatory objectives (Burby 2001). However, while broader stakeholder involvement can make plans better by incorporating local knowledge, true public engagement can be difficult if the public lacks interest in the process or if planners limit the recruitment of participants to more traditional groups, such as developers or neighborhood associations (Burby 2003).

To maintain eligibility for certain categories of mitigation and recovery funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government agencies, US jurisdictions are presently required by the Disaster Mitigation Act (DMA) of 2000 to have an HMP (FEMA 2014). However, as the evidence presented here suggests, many rural communities may not have the in-house expertise needed to produce their own plan or the resources to hire experienced employees or consultants to assist with the development of high-quality hazard mitigation plans. Our findings indicate that the chronically limited resources of rural municipalities may put them at a disadvantage when it comes to planning for disasters, particularly through limitations relating to the development of high-quality HMPs.

Plan Quality

Plan quality analysis is one way to measure both the value and the effectiveness of the planning process (Brody 2003). As initially outlined by Kaiser, Godschalk, and Chapin (1995), and further refined in future iterations and within the planning literature, high-quality plans can be identified by a strong fact base that accurately characterizes local conditions, by goals that are clearly articulated, and by policies that guide decisions about future decisions, ensuring that the plan’s targets are met in the future (Berke et al. 2006). An amended framework suggests that the quality of land use plans, a broad category including hazard mitigation plans, should be assessed within two “conceptual dimensions,” that of internal plan quality (fact base, goals, policies, implementation) and that of external plan quality (how well the plan conforms to unique local conditions and takes into account stakeholder needs and values) (Berke and Godschalk 2009). Based on this framework, more than forty peer-reviewed studies have subsequently assessed plan quality through the use of the core set of plan quality principles (Berke and Godschalk 2009; Stevens, Lyles, and Berke 2014). The use of these well-established plan quality principles allows for the assessment of multiple types of plans and for the comparison of plans across jurisdictions (Berke and Godschalk 2009; Lyles, Berke, and Smith 2014).

Hazard Mitigation Plan Quality

The framework we used to evaluate the quality of local hazard mitigation plans is supported by an emerging and expanding literature in plan quality analysis. Frazier et al. (2013), in their study on HMPs in Washington State define plan quality, as it relates to hazard mitigation, as “focused on how well an HMP matches local hazards and local issues,” as well as “plan thoroughness, level of analysis provided, organization, and ease of application by local community” (54). Plan quality evaluations found in the literature are premised on various principles of plan quality with measurable indicators of each principle adapted to a particular domain of issues including housing (Hoch 2007), climate change (Basset and Shandas 2010), open space preservation and smart growth (Norton 2008; Steelman and Hess 2009), and ecological systems (Brody, Highfield, and Carrasco 2004). While several studies examine local hazard mitigation in comprehensive plans (Berke and French 1994; Dalton and Burby 1994), and stand-alone local hazard mitigation plans in coastal areas (Kang, Peacock, and Husein 2010; Lyles, Berke, and Smith 2014; Olonilua Ibitayo 2011; Tang et al. 2008; Frazier et al. 2013), no studies have exclusively examined the particular plan quality issues and needs of rural communities vulnerable to natural hazards.

While the methods and protocols for normative plan quality evaluation research are well established in the literature, we believe the complex nature of hazard mitigation planning and emergency preparedness demands a more robust, multidisciplinary approach that can address some of the potential shortcomings of plans by collecting best practices and promoting effective interventions that can be widely adopted to improve plans. One way of collecting this type of information is through conducting key informant interviews (Kumar, Stern, and Anderson 1993). Key informant interviews with practitioners familiar with the HMP can provide local context as well as a better understanding of the limitations of local resources (Frazier et al. 2013). Combining a code-based plan quality analysis with a thoughtful and well-executed set of key informant interviews can result in in high-quality “synthesis research” that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative evidence of factors affecting the quality of rural hazard mitigation plans (Johnson and Hayashi 2012). Qualitative data from key informants can also assist in gauging more subjective perceptions about the HMP and the planning process from those who participated in it, as well as gathering additional information about the history of hazard mitigation planning in the jurisdiction and the relative contributions of various stakeholders (Berke et al. 2013).

The previously cited research conducted by Frazier et al. (2013) uses a mixed-methods approach to assess the plan quality and perceived effectiveness of HMPs in both rural and urban areas in Washington State, providing relevant support for both the quantitative and qualitative methods we propose for our own study. Building on the core plan quality principles, Frazier’s research team conducted stakeholder interviews with the individuals responsible for HMP creation in the study areas, as well as with state and federal emergency management professionals. While our study intends to supplement the quantitative plan quality assessment with the qualitative data gleaned from interviews, Frazier’s study utilized the stakeholder interviews mainly to inform the creation of an “evaluation matrix”—a plan quality assessment tool that was then used to analyze sample HMPs. The results section of this article will more thoroughly detail similarities and differences between these studies.

Methods

Data Collection and Coding

The sampling frame for this study consists of 379 rural counties in eight southeastern US states, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines “rural” along a continuum that includes nine different codes distinguishing metropolitan counties by size and nonmetropolitan counties by their degree of urbanization or proximity to metropolitan areas (Reynnells and La Caille John 2014). For this study, we identified rural counties as those with USDA continuum codes 6 through 9, defined as follows: (6) Urban population of 2,500 to 19,999, adjacent to a metro area; (7) Urban population of 2,500 to 19,999, not adjacent to a metro area; (8) Completely rural or less than 2,500 urban population, adjacent to a metro area; and (9) Completely rural or less than 2,500 urban population, not adjacent to a metro area (Parker 2004). A stratified random sample of twelve rural counties was randomly selected from each state for a total sample size of ninety-six (Figure 1). The selected counties include both coastal and inland counties at risk from a variety of natural hazards.

Figure 1.

Map of US Department of Agriculture continuum codes 6–9 rural counties in federal emergency management region IV, n = 379.

County-level HMPs adopted between 2004 and 2009 were collected from county websites or requested via email contact with emergency management and planning departments; eighty-four HMPs were collected (84/96; 87.5 percent) overall. Ten of the twelve HMPs we could not obtain were for rural counties in Tennessee. These HMPs were not available online and we were also unable to obtain a copy from the County directly because of concerns about the confidentiality of risk assessment data. A majority of the HMPs obtained (n = 68; 81 percent) were prepared by consultants using federal hazard mitigation grant program funds (n = 51; 61 percent).

Plans were content-analyzed to determine how well they represented six principles of plan quality, which are divided into two conceptual groups: direction setting principles and action-oriented principles (Berke et al. 2006). Direction setting principles include (1) goals that express future desired conditions grounded in community values; (2) a fact base that provides a rational foundation regarding identified hazards and the existing resources and capabilities available to reduce risks resulting from those hazards; and (3) policies that guide actions to achieve goals. Action-oriented principles include (1) implementation guidelines, which provide information about how the community will carry out the proposed policies including organizational responsibilities, funding sources, and timelines; (2) interorganizational coordination, which identifies how organizations and agencies coordinate between levels of government and across the public and private sectors; and (3) participation, which recognizes the involvement of formal and informal actors engaged in the planning process (Berke et al. 2011; Berke, Smith, and Lyles 2012; Tang et al. 2008). For each of the six principles, discrete “items” are assessed to determine the extent and specificity to which a plan corresponds to the plan quality principles (Berke and Godschalk 2009; Berke et al. 2006). The number of items per principle ranges from 13 (participation) to 184 (inter-organizational coordination). Table 1 provides a summary of the plan quality principles and their corresponding content.

Table 1.

Definitions and Components of Plan Quality Principles.

Plan Quality Principle	Definition^a	Sample of Items Assessed
Direction-setting principles
1. Goals	“Future desired conditions that reflect breadth of values affected by the plan”	Public safety; equitable hazard loss; environmental protection
2. Fact Base	“Provides the empirical foundation to ensure that key hazard problems are identified and prioritized, and mitigation policy-making is well-informed”	Natural hazards identified (e.g., climate change, hurricanes, coastal storms, tornados, extreme cold and heat); vulnerability assessment; risk assessment
3. Policies	“Serve as a general guide to decisions about development and assure that plan goals are achieved”	Property acquisition and elevation; assessment tools; updated data; educational awareness; technical assistance; develop incentives; develop regulations; financial assistance
Action-oriented principles
4. Implementation and Monitoring	“Involves assignment of organizational responsibilities, timelines and funds to implement and plan” and “tracking the performance of policies”	Assigning organizational responsibility; timeline for action; projecting costs; monitoring plan performance
5. Interorganizational Coordination	“Entails recognition of the interdependent actions of state and local organization that need coordination for plan implementation”	Stakeholders (federal, state, county, municipalities, community-based organizations; nonprofit)
6. Participation	“Involves recognition of formal and informal actors engaged in preparing the plan, including other governmental bodies, private-sector institutions, non-profits, and individual citizens”	Public engagement techniques (e.g., citizen advisory committee, public notice and targeted outreach)

Definitions for the principles are taken from Berke, Smith, and Lyles (2012), which applied the principles to state hazard mitigation plans completed in compliance with the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000.

The method of assessment and measurement of items for this project was replicated from previous research on hazard mitigation plan quality (Berke and Godschalk 2009; Brody, Godschalk, and Burby 2003; Nelson and French 2002; Tang et al. 2008). We used a binary measure (1 = present, 0 = not present) as indication of whether a given item for a plan quality principle was contained within a plan. Consistent with prior plan quality evaluation studies, an index score for each principle was computed using three steps (Berke and Godschalk 2009). First, the scores of the indicators were summed within each of the principles. Second, the summed scores were then divided by the total possible score for each principle. Finally, this fractional score was multiplied by 10, placing each score on an index scale of 0–10. Total plan quality score was calculated as the sum of the three direction-setting principles and three action-oriented principles. Thus, the maximum score for each jurisdiction’s plan is 30 for the direction-setting principles, and 30 for the action-oriented principles. A higher quality plan is thus described as one achieving a relatively higher index score.

To increase reliability in the plan quality scoring, two trained coders independently coded the plans. Rules were developed by the coding team to ensure that each coder interpreted the items as consistently as possible. One of every six plans was double coded, and intercoder reliability scores were calculated for each set of plans. Prereconciliation agreement was 90 percent, which is consistent with prior research in this area (Berke and Godschalk 2009); above 80 percent is generally considered acceptable (Miles and Huberman 1994).

Key Informant Interviews

Much of the plan quality literature relies on systematic, quantitative assessment of plans using various coding instruments and protocols to assess the presence of items (Baer 1997; Berke and Godschalk 2009). To add local perspective on the HMP development process that might be lost through a purely code-based analysis of the evidence, and to more fully capture the complexities experienced by vulnerable rural communities related to planning for disasters, twenty-one key informant interviews were conducted with emergency management and hazard mitigation professionals in a subsample of seven rural counties to provide qualitative data to supplement quantitative findings. The subsample of rural counties was selected by first identifying the counties in our original sample with the highest vulnerability (as measured by the Social Vulnerability Index for Disaster Management developed by Flanagan et al. [2011]) and then selecting from that sample the counties with the highest and lowest quality HMP as scored by the plan coders. Overall, six counties (three high-scoring and three low-scoring) and four alternates (two high-scoring and two low-scoring) were selected. Contact was made by telephone with the official responsible for the HMP and a modified snowball sample was used to expand the pool of potential key informants by asking the official to refer the research team to others in the county with knowledge of the HMP.

Research team members conducted interviews with between three and five representatives from each of the seven counties in the subsample. A written interview guide was developed and the interviews took a semistructured format, with fifteen close-ended questions asked of all participants, as well as unique prompts for follow-up questions dependent on the responses provided by the contributors. Interviewees included current and former emergency management coordinators and directors, county-level planning directors, and others who regularly interact with emergency planning and management services. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for key themes using inductive or open coding (i.e., themes are not predetermined, but rather emerge from data through examination and comparison). The project was reviewed and determined exempt by the University’s Institutional Review Board (#10-1873).

Results

Plan Quality Analysis

Most plans contained elements for each of the plan quality principles. Table 2 indicates that the mean scores of plans from rural jurisdictions were low. We calculated scores ranging from 1.5 to 5.1 for direction-setting principles, and 1.1 to 4.2 for action-oriented principles on an indexed scale of 0 to 10. Inter-organizational Coordination scored lowest given the potential number of items within this principle, with a mean of 1.1. Other lower scoring principles, on average, were Policies (Mean: 1.5) and Implementation (Mean: 1.6). The highest scoring plan quality principles were Fact Base (mean = 5.1), Goals (mean = 4.4), and Participation (mean = 4.2). In general, principles with more items had lower scores than those principles with fewer items. The mean scores for the rural plans were considerably lower than those calculated for 175 randomly selected local hazard mitigation plans produced under the Disaster Mitigation Act in coastal jurisdictions of six states (Lyles, Berke, and Smith 2014). Using equivalent metrics for the principles of plan quality, mean plan quality scores from the six-state study (Table 3) were considerably higher than the scores of rural plans for five of the six principles (only the fact base principle was higher in rural plans); these findings for rural plans clearly suggest room for improvement.

Table 2.

Plan Quality Scores for Rural Local Hazard Mitigation Plans.

	Mean	Standard Deviation	Minimum	Maximum
Direction-setting principles
Goals	4.4	1.3	0.7	7.1
Fact Base	5.1	1.1	2.2	7.2
Policies	1.5	0.6	0.5	2.8
Action-oriented principles
Participation	4.2	1.2	2.3	6.9
Inter-organizational Coordination	1.1	0.3	0.5	2.3
Implementation	1.6	0.8	0.2	3.4

Note: n = 84 counties in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Scores were standardized on a 0.0–10.0 scale.

Table 3.

Six-State Study Plan Quality Scores—Comparison.

	Mean (Six-State Study^a)	Mean (Rural HMPs^b)
Direction-setting principles
Goals	5.2	4.4
Fact Base	3.6	5.1
Policies	2.7	1.5
Action-oriented principles
Participation	4.9	4.2
Inter-organizational Coordination	1.8	1.1
Implementation	5.9	1.6

Note: Scores were standardized on a 0.0–10.0 scale.

n = 175.

n = 84.

An examination of variation of mean scores reveals that the scores across principles are significantly different. The widely different scores raise a concern that a plan scoring low on one principle may undermine other well-developed principles with higher scores. For example, the fact base received the highest score among all six principles (Mean: 5.1), but the policy principle had the second lowest score among all principles (Mean: 1.5). This finding suggests that on average plans do not fully utilize the fact bases to develop well-conceived mitigation policies. Content analysis of individual plans revealed this pattern. For example, a common weakness was plans with a strong fact basis (maps that identify hazards and estimates of the number of vulnerable structures), but policies that were very narrowly focused. For example, rural plans typically included emergency management policies or structural protection policies, but entirely ignored critical land use policy options that would address relocation of structures in hazard areas.

Qualitative Data Analysis

A number of themes emerged from the key informant interviews pertaining to the inherently vulnerable nature of rural counties, the difficulties of garnering public support for disaster preparation planning and policies, and the complications relating to developing and implementing high-quality HMPs (Table 4). Each theme, supported by specific participant responses is discussed, in detail, in the following section.

Table 4.

Themes and Topics of Key Informant Interviews.

Theme	Related Topics
Background	Overall vulnerability; concern for the future; public concern; vulnerable populations; active disaster recovery organizations; relief services available
Hazard mitigation planning process	Awareness/familiarity of/with hazard mitigation plan; knowledge of planning process
Hazard mitigation plan implementation	Organizational roles in hazard mitigation planning; steps taken to reduce vulnerability; targets of steps taken to reduce vulnerability
Outcomes	Effectiveness of steps, strategies, and plan; additional action(s) needed

Rural Counties Are Perceived as Inherently More Vulnerable to Disasters

Most interviewees self-identified their communities as being relatively more vulnerable to natural disasters based on their intrinsically rural nature. Vulnerability results not only from the unique threats facing a specific geographic region (i.e., a higher vulnerability to tornados in the Midwest or to hurricanes on the coast) but also from the more limited resources (both human and material) available to, and the capacity of, the rural governing body. Interviewees noted that rural communities are often located in geographically remote locations, complicating the logistics involved in hazard mitigation and disaster preparation, response and recovery. Populations residing in rural communities tend to be more widespread, lacking the concentrated centers of urban regions, and requiring additional resources to both reach and assist these residents before and after a disaster.

Public Awareness and Participation Are Difficult to Achieve

A general sense of frustration was evident among the interviewees both in response to the relatively limited resources available to them as well as to the public’s tendency toward “reactive” responses to hazards. For example, one respondent noted, “the public isn’t concerned until it affects them.” On the other hand, some interviewees suggested that as a result of “modern communication . . . people are very attuned to what happens . . . people know the threat is constant and [that] it could happen here.” Overall, there was a sense that public involvement in the rural communities surveyed was insubstantial. Some respondents felt that, perhaps, methods used to recruit the public may have been ineffective or that residents did not fully grasp the importance of their participation in planning for risk reduction. Other interviewees believed that there was simply just an overwhelming lack of interest among residents, who may not understand the planning process or the desired outcomes of planning for hazard mitigation.

Inferior Housing and an Inability to Adequately Prepare Equate to Higher Vulnerability

When asked directly about what factors might be utilized to identify vulnerable populations in rural counties, many interviewees tend to classify vulnerable populations largely based on the quality of their housing or their economic status. One respondent stated, “when it comes down to it, weather is getting worse and the building structures are getting cheaper. That’s a concern.” Interviewees noted that substandard housing in their communities was primarily inhabited by minority populations or those living below the poverty line since mobile homes are a “cheaper” alternative. Rural minority and low-income groups were often indicated as vulnerable because of a real or perceived inability to stockpile survival necessities, a lack of access to vehicles for purposes of preparation or evacuation, and substandard modes of communication, including a lack of Internet access, television, and/or radio. Interviewees also suggested that breakdowns in communication, further contributing to vulnerability, result from language barriers, disabilities, age, and remote housing locations.

Local Organizations Perceived as More Effective during Disaster Preparation and Recovery

Respondents in rural communities generally find faith- or church-based organizations to be the most effective at assisting the community while preparing or recovering from a disaster because of their fast response time (they are largely locally based organizations), their local knowledge about the community, and their ability to oversee long-term recovery efforts. While more well-known, national/international organizations are recognized by interviewees for their contributions, groups such as the Red Cross or Salvation Army tend to fill more specific, immediate needs (i.e., medicines, shelter, basic supplies) while local groups are more successful and helpful over the long term.

A “Disconnect” Exists between the Development of the Hazard Mitigation Plan and Its Implementation

Most interviewees were aware that their rural counties had a hazard mitigation plan and how they could access that plan, if necessary, but the majority of participants lacked specific knowledge about the contents of their community’s plan. With the exception of a few emergency management professionals, most respondents were unsure of their role in the hazard mitigation plan implementation process. Additionally, those informants not holding emergency management positions often did not view themselves as included in the process of creating or implementing the hazard mitigation plan, and many did not want to assert any form of involvement in order to avoid “stepping on the toes” of the coordination efforts of emergency managers. As noted earlier, public involvement during plan creation left much to be desired. Under the DMA of 2000, a community must have a hazard mitigation plan in place to remain eligible for certain hazard-related funding; there is little incentive provided, however, to ensure the actions contained within the plan are implemented. Given the lack of community involvement, the lack of information among practitioners, and the lack of incentive from the federal government, there is very little motivating the community to implement the policies and strategies contained within the plan.

Hazard Mitigation Plans Are a “Step in the Right Direction” but There Is More Work to Be Done to Improve Outcomes

Despite the difficulties mentioned above, interviewees provided numerous examples of the positive benefits stemming from the preparation of hazard mitigation plans. Some examples include the identification of vulnerabilities in the community, a means to educate the public, the creation of a strong fact base to guide future decision making, raising awareness of dangers, facilitating inter-agency cooperation, and helping to prepare the community in order to prevent “head scratching” in the event of an imminent disaster. One interviewee stressed the importance of “having things in place that you can plan for, and prepare for a disaster, and then having a communication system in place where people can find out about the unexpected to mitigate further losses of lives or to allocate resources for recovery. Recovery begins the minute after a disaster occurs. That is the most important thing for the citizens. They want to return to normal the minute the clouds clear.”

While it was made clear that hazard mitigation planning is a step in the right direction, respondents also point out a number of ways by which communities can improve plan preparation and implementation. Planning for the worst-case scenario and educating the public are the two overarching areas where improvement is needed, according to the informants consulted for this project. It is noted that more “proactive” methods of vulnerability and risk reduction are needed as opposed to the primarily reactive nature of current disaster preparation and recovery. A critical need for rural counties, in particular, is enhanced communication and collaboration with neighboring communities in order to promote more integrative planning outcomes focused on sharing resources during and after emergency situations. “You share information, and you train with these other people, because these are your neighbors. These are the ones that if something only happens in one county you may get the surrounding three counties to come help you, so you train with them so you better understand what to expect from them and can better benefit and be more applicable to their needs.”

Discussion

Overall, the sample of rural hazard mitigation plans did not achieve high scores for the six plan quality principles under consideration. For individual principles, mean scores range between 1.1 (Inter-organizational Coordination) and 5.1 (Fact Base). While these scores are lower than those calculated for the six-state study cited earlier, they are not altogether surprising given the results of prior research. Frazier et al. (2013), using a similar approach to plan quality analysis, found exceptional differences between the quality of HMPs in urban and rural jurisdictions, noting an emphasis in rural counties’ plans on “response” rather than on “mitigation” (57). Other studies have also highlighted this focus on response capabilities versus hazard mitigation as a factor in plan quality (Berke, Smith, and Lyles 2012). This is also an emerging issue in the field of climate adaptation planning. Horney et al. (2012) reports similar discrepancies between urban and rural jurisdictions in a comparable study of fifty-seven counties’ HMPs in the southeastern United States. Urban counties scored higher for all three direction-setting principles, probably because of the higher capacity of urban government agencies (i.e., GIS and risk assessment capability, more resources to dedicate to planning, more planning and emergency management personnel, and more time and staff to dedicate to public meetings). Horney et al. also notes that rural HMPs scored higher than urban plans for both the Implementation and Monitoring principle and the Inter-organizational Coordination principle. This observation is mainly attributed to the less complex nature of rural jurisdictions and a likely history of cooperation between a smaller number of employees and municipalities in rural areas (Horney et al. 2012). Our study, however, reports low plan quality scores in general, as well as for both the Implementation and Inter-organizational Coordination principles in rural HMPs; future research might focus on achieving a better understanding of this divergence as well as identifying reasons for this, including potentially the use of consultants to prepare plans.

As a unique study focusing exclusively on rural hazard mitigation plans, our research helps to fill the gap between quantitatively assessing the quality of a hazard mitigation plan and better understanding, through qualitative feedback, the motivations, and limitations, which influence the creation and implementation of the plan. Overall, our interviewees placed a high value on HMPs, citing many positive benefits to both the plan development process and the plan itself. Understanding the potential shortcomings of plans helps to identify areas to direct resources in order to improve the quality of these plans, particularly in communities that self-identify as highly vulnerable. In rural communities though, plan quality scores can only predict, not guarantee, a better outcome, as it relates to hazard mitigation planning. A jurisdiction with a high scoring plan will not necessarily be more resilient unless that plan is accompanied by both an effective communication scheme that raises awareness as well as a robust implementation strategy. As one respondent put it, “To be honest with you, what I know of the mitigation plan is that there is not a lot of mitigation or implementation—it is more of a risk assessment and looks at historical data as to disasters and threats and what has occurred before—to determine what has happened before. It is not very sound in offering a good plan for mitigation or planning for a disaster.”

Although the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 seems to have motivated a large number of local governments to undertake a hazard mitigation planning process, the boilerplate nature of HMPs frequently prepared by outside consultants and the flexibility of the framework provided may only motivate jurisdictions to have a plan rather than a high-quality plan. This is similar to prior findings related to state mandates for planning, which have shown that mandates have led to the development of plans in communities that previously did not have them, but not necessarily high-quality ones (Berke 1996). If HMPs follow a “one-size-fits-all” approach with little room for modifications to incorporate the unique circumstances and demographics of rural communities, there will continue to be little included in the plan that can account for the unique nature of individual communities while still maintaining the integrity/federal standards of the HMPs. One approach may be the development of Federal and State policies, backed with financial support, for regional planning efforts that could be both efficient and effective at addressing hazards and vulnerabilities in rural areas.

Conclusion

When considered together, the plan quality scores and the qualitative interviews allow for a unique perspective on the experience of planning for natural hazards in exceptionally rural jurisdictions. Although, overall, the HMPs achieved low plan quality scores, the follow-up key informant interviews allowed the research team to dig deeper and better understand the realities of developing HMPs in these settings, to identify lessons learned, and to suggest potential avenues for improving HMPs in the future.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Tania Jordanova and Brennan Bouma for assistance with plan coding.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This publication was supported by grant 2009-06143 from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of USDA.

Author Biographies

Jennifer Horney is an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Texas A&M School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the public health impacts of disasters.

Mai Nguyen is an associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on urban growth, governance, and socially vulnerable populations.

David Salvesen is a research associate at the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Caroline Dwyer is a graduate research assistant in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

John Cooper is an associate professor of practice in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M. His research focuses on community engagement and hazard planning.

Philip Berke is a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M. His research focuses on plan quality, social vulnerability, and the effectiveness of planning networks.

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