The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) established the Hazard
Mitigation Grant Program for the purpose of funding projects (construction,
relocation, retrofitting, ...) that reduce --- or mitigate --- damagefrom various disasters.
The Emergency Management Division (EMD) of the Michigan Departmentof
State Police is responsible for processing hazard mitigation applications
to the FEMA and, in particular, for performing a Benefit-Cost Analysis
for each application.

The FEMA has provided the EMD with guidelines and a software package
(using the Microsoft suite of tools) for doing this analysis when the
disaster is a flood or earthquake (referred to as the ``flood model''
or ``earthquake model'' respectively).  However, the EMD has identifiedan
additional twenty or more additional  type of disasters to whichMichigan is vulnerable.

The ``Hazard Mitigation Project'' seeks to increase the number (or
coverage) of the tools available to the EMD for Benefit-Cost Analysis
when the disaster is something other than a flood or earthquake.

The flood model is a typical ``hazard model'' and serves to illustrate
the current tools.  All three of the mentioned tools run as macropackages
under Microsoft Excel (a spread sheet).

The flood model user enters data into the spread sheet directed by the
macro package. Built into the model are many types of data that arespecific to
the hazard type and which are used by the model (macro package) to
calculate damage expectations. For example, in assessing potentialflood damage
to an area, one kind of entered data is the First Floor Elevation (FFE)of the various
structures in the area. Built into the model is the historic frequencyof floods to a certain
depth. The model uses these two pieces of data to estimate future structural
damage costs.

The ideally completed project deliverable would be a ``hazard model''
(Excel macro package) that is completely general (generic) on the one
hand and easy to use (minimal data entry) on the other.

Since generality and ease-of-use likely will have to be traded off
against one another, a compromise might take the form of a ``hazard
model'' (Excel macro package) that includes a hazard selection that
dynamically reconfigures the data entry and analysis portion of the
model.

This summary prepared with the assistance of D. B. Duckworthand M. C. Schnepp
of the Michigan Department of State Police.