Building your roadmap to a disaster resilient future

The purpose of Building Your Roadmap to a Disaster Resilient Future is to provide an easy to use and easy to understand reference for mapping a route toward disaster resilience. The target audience is DRR Ambassadors – the community residents, emergency management personnel, local planning and zoning staff, elected officials, and other private, public, academic, and business stakeholders who are interested in and willing to become involved in advancing disaster resilience in communities.

The imagery of the roadmap is meant to convey that communities get on the road to disaster risk reduction and community resilience from wherever they are, map out their trip toward the destination they envision, and take the route that works for them. That trip can be complex, adventurous, and frustrating. There are starts, stops, detours, and periodic gridlock as communities wend their way through countless programs, requirements, and resources. The Roadmap will provide its users with ideas for routes to follow community disaster risk reduction along with explanations and hyperlinks to a wide array of technical and other resources needed at various junctures. Each chapter includes a related example of a community’s progress to that mile post.

Building Your Roadmap to a Disaster Resilient Future, developed by the NHMA under a 2015 Cooperative Agreement with FEMA, (U.S.DHS/FEMA Grant No. EMW-2015-CA-APP-00091) is intended to be a tool and a key part of the DRR Ambassador Curriculum. The NHMA DRR Ambassador Curriculum provides multidisciplinary educational resources, self-study curricula, and training workshops for community leaders and others from the private, public, academic and other vested sectors to engage and lead community-level disaster risk reduction dialogue.