Illinois Extension led the effort to develop the 2023 Illinois Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan. The plan allows Illinois communities and organizations access to funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Extension worked with the Illinois State Water Survey and graduate students to gather stakeholder input and create technical tools for the plan. The plan addresses new FEMA requirements to review the impact of climate change on the state, as well as how disasters affect vulnerable populations. The plan incorporates an enhanced state profile, organizing the state into four regions, with demographic and economic data for each region, as well as the climate and geology of the regions. These regional profiles will allow local jurisdictions to compare their areas to the surrounding area, instead of the state as a whole.
Extension Community and Economic Development Educators and Specialists have developed local multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plans across the state. According to Extension Educator Carrie McKillip, “We worked with county emergency managers after flooding in 2008 to develop hazard mitigation plans, since very few existed in the state. The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 requires that any jurisdiction wanting to apply for mitigation funding must have a FEMA approved Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan in place, and most of our counties did not.” According to McKillip, the state must also have a FEMA approved Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan for the local plans to tie local mitigation actions to statewide initiatives.
The plan is on the IEMA-OHS website under the mitigation section.
https://iemaohs.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/iemaohs/recovery/documents/plan-illmitigationplan.pdf
University of Illinois Extension: https://extension.illinois.edu/