Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101
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Planners should consult authoritative sources, such as the United States Census Bureau’s American
Community Survey (ACS),
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to obtain trusted demographic, economic, social and housing data. Basic
GIS tools may also be useful to planners in understanding their jurisdiction’s characteristics and
composition.
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In addition, planners can integrate relevant data and analysis generated through
state and local hazard mitigation planning processes.
Also important is the process of identifying critical infrastructure and understanding, at a high level,
how it supports core functions in the community. For instance, having a basic understanding of utility
services—including where they are located, who owns them, how are they regulated, how the
jurisdiction uses them and what they need to remain operational—can allow planners to consider
strategies for maintaining or restoring them in a disaster. Another consideration is the private and
nonprofit sector partners who provide goods and services to communities, maintain supply chains
and sustain employment and tax bases. Information collected during this phase of the planning
process may include geospatial data, contact lists and summary information about critical
infrastructure, businesses and nonprofits. Additionally, planners may consider using FEMA’s
Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT), which enables users to analyze socio-demographic,
infrastructure and hazard data and consider how this information affects a jurisdiction’s likely needs
following different types of disasters.
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Planning teams can integrate this information into an analytic product summarizing key information
about the jurisdiction’s socio-demographic data, critical infrastructure and industry. This analysis is a
shared reference for the planning team, highlighting baseline information about the community,
listing useful data sources, illustrating key community features through maps or GIS tools and
offering findings that are relevant to understanding risk. This analytic product can significantly
enhance the planning team’s understanding of community characteristics.
Analytic Resources
FEMA sponsors PrepTalks, an ongoing emergency management education series.
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A 2018
PrepTalk by Dr. Robert Chen, “Who is at Risk? Rapid Mapping of Potential Hazard Exposure,”
and its associated materials provide tips and templates on using ACS data to help planners
effectively analyze socio-demographic datasets to support planning initiatives.
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28
The ACS page is available on the Census Bureau website at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs.
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State, local, tribal, territorial and insular area planners may have access to GIS capabilities in their emergency
management department, planning department, or other departments and divisions. When GIS capabilities are not
available at the local level, state governments may provide these services.
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For more information on RAPT, see https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/resilience-analysis-and-
planning-tool.
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For information on this series or materials associated with specific sessions, see FEMA’s PrepTalks webpage at
https://www.fema.gov/preptalks
.
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This PrepTalk is available on FEMA’s YouTube channel at
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL720Kw_OojlJiYKDZQwKG7HAgV_qNjbLB
.