7.2. Monitoring

Plan monitoring means tracking how the plan is carried out over time. This includes any progress made on goals, actions, plan integration and public involvement. The plan must identify who will carry out monitoring activities, how these activities will happen, and how often. The plan may define each of these based on what works best for the community.

Regular monitoring can include reports or other deliverables, as well as expectations for maintenance meetings. The coordinator for plan maintenance is often the same person or agency that led the plan’s development. Each agency assigned to a mitigation action is responsible for tracking and reporting on each of their actions.

Monitoring meetings do not need to focus only on the mitigation plan. To get the most out of the maintenance process, discuss the plan regularly in existing meetings or processes. This might include regular town halls or when your community uses other plans, such as its comprehensive, budget or recovery plans. This makes monitoring a part of the administrative function of your community.

Why do we monitor the plan? The simple answer is that resilience and risk reduction are ongoing commitments. The mitigation plan is a long-term strategy to reduce disaster losses. Monitoring encourages participants to own their mitigation efforts. It also gives participants a consistent touchpoint for reporting progress and keeps risk reduction top-of-mind.

The most basic monitoring effort asks:

• Are the vulnerabilities in the plan are still accurate?
• Do the mitigation goals and actions still apply to the hazards profiled?
• Are mitigation actions progressing?

Tracking progress on mitigation actions reduces the amount of work it takes to update actions at the 5-year update. Keeping track of actions as they go forward over time is easier than checking the progress of all the mitigation activities completed over a 5-year period during the update.

More advanced monitoring:

• Looks at all aspects of the plan. Taking a holistic view of monitoring makes sure that each section of the plan is up to date and that progress is being made.
• Documents any changes made. This maintains a consistent record of progress made on mitigation activities and can inform the next plan update.
• Highlights success stories. These stories show how valuable mitigation, planning and the resulting risk reduction are to the whole community.

A good, consistent monitoring process can lead to a list of items to update in the next plan. This kind of list can inform the SOW for the next plan update. It can also be a checklist for update priorities. Routine monitoring is key to keeping participants invested in the plan.

Annex B includes an example worksheet for reporting progress on a mitigation.

Evaluating means looking at how well the plan is meeting its goals. This goes a step beyond monitoring; it asks if the plan is serving its intended purpose. It lets the planning team see if any changes need to be made. For instance, if a goal is to boost public awareness of hazards and risk, conduct a survey once a year to gauge how local residents’ perception of risk is changing. This can help show if the actions in the plan are working as intended. The information you collect in this step will be the basis for the plan update.

The planning team can create a list of metrics to measure the progress of actions. Do this in coordination with all local jurisdictions that adopted the plan. Share progress updates on the plan; ask them to do the same. This lends accountability for the maintenance process. Communities are ultimately responsible for determining the success of their planning effort. This may mean evaluating whether identified actions reduced risk, whether the goals and purpose of the plan were accurate, and what stage of implementation each action is in.

The plan evaluation process can establish baseline risk and resiliency metrics to track risk and vulnerability reduction. The plan could then use the baseline data to show cumulative benefits of past (and future) mitigation actions (for plan updates). Over time, the plan can document decisions that increase long-term risk (outside of the five-year planning window), and document losses avoided from natural hazards that occurred since the plan was updated and addresses what losses occurred that the plan did not cover.

The planning team may develop a schedule for both regular meetings and specific deliverables. To make the best use of funding opportunities, schedule the meetings to line up with an existing process. This can include the community budget cycle or FEMA’s annual grant cycle. If reports or other deliverables are needed, figure out their frequency and reporting requirements.

There is no set timeline for evaluation. A plan can be evaluated at any point in its lifecycle. This may be on a longer cycle than plan monitoring since results can take time to become clear. Many communities convene the planning team once a year to evaluate the plan’s strength and to prepare a progress report for their governing bodies.

It is highly encouraged to carry out a more detailed review of the plan after disasters. These events often reveal vulnerabilities that may not be in the plan. These may also change the priorities of some actions. If major changes to the plan are needed, think about updating the plan earlier than required.

Updating means reviewing and revising the plan at least once every 5 years. Keep in mind that the plan expires 5 years after it was approved. During the update process you must follow the whole planning process:

• Convene a planning team and complete stakeholder and public outreach.
• Identify new plans, studies, reports and technical information that pertain to your community’s vulnerabilities.
• Validate or update your hazard list.
• Update hazard profiles to include events that occurred since the last plan.
• Validate or update community capabilities.
• Validate or update community assets.
• Update the risk assessment based on the above.
• Update the mitigation strategy based on the new risk assessment.
• Address changes in development and changes in priorities.
• Document and describe the plan update process.

Maintaining the plan annually can make this process easier. If minor updates have occurred throughout the plan’s lifecycle, when it comes time to formally adopt the updated plan, you can validate information as needed with fewer major changes. The current plan must explain how the update will take place and who will lead the update process.

Bear in mind that the plan expires 5 years after it was adopted. Leave enough time to complete the update before the current plan expires. It may help to include a schedule of activities that gives you enough time to obtain grant funding, if needed, and to complete the planning process.

The plan can also include procedures to update the plan following a disaster event or that concur with the creation of a recovery or post-disaster redevelopment plan. Your community’s vulnerabilities and mitigation priorities often change following a disaster. Public awareness tends to increase, and the demand and support for mitigation often increases following a disaster. You may choose to use these moments to factor mitigation into recovery. This can include rebuilding in ways to improve safety and avoid similar losses in the future. You should also collect data on the hazard and its impacts for future plan updates. If you want to develop a recovery plan prior to a disaster, aligning the recovery and mitigation planning efforts will unite your messaging about building resilience.

Plan Maintenance Step	When	How	Who
Monitoring	Twice per year​.	Get status updates on mitigation actions, compile progress reports and identify mid-course corrections.​	Emergency Management Director
Evaluating	Once a year or after a disaster event.	Use a standard form to review how the plan has been carried out so far and record lessons learned.	Emergency Management Director, Lead Jurisdiction Planning Department Manager
Updating	Every 5 years, or after a disaster event.	Review the plan and update it as necessary. This may mean hiring a contractor to perform a more in-depth update process.	Emergency Management Director, Lead Jurisdiction Planning Department Manager