Integrated Planning for Natural Infrastructure in Hazard Mitigation
This 60-minute webinar was held on January 14, 2026, and focused on integrated planning for natural infrastructure in hazard mitigation. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are actions to protect, sustainably manage or restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges, simultaneously providing benefits for people and the environment. Washington State’s Emergency Management Division is a national leader in hazard mitigation and recently collaborated with American Rivers to develop a NBS Project Pipeline to build the case for investments in Washington, create connections between agencies and local communities, and focus future technical and funding assistance to help communities access climate resilience funding. This presentation will provide an overview of Washington State’s approach to disaster resilience and hazard mitigation planning. We will discuss strategies for collaboratively developing hazard mitigation plans across levels of government, examples of integrating hazard mitigation and disaster resilience into community planning, development of the NBS Project Pipeline and lessons learned to inform other state and community mitigation strategies.
Learn more and view the webinar on ASFPM’s YouTube channel.
Integrated Watershed Management Planning: Recovery and Mitigation Efforts Following the 2013 Colorado Floods
This 90-minute webinar was held on August 20, 2025, and focused on integrated planning efforts following the 2013 Colorado floods. In early September 2013 several days of heavy rain led to massive flooding across Colorado’s front range communities. Streams reclaimed floodplains, destroyed roads, bridges, homes, and other infrastructure. Over the next five years many coalitions of river and highway professionals and local citizens implemented 117 river restoration projects and 200 infrastructure projects in ten different watersheds that drain from the continental divide to the front range. The Colorado Water Conservation Board, an agency within Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, led the effort to restore riverscapes within these watersheds. The Colorado Department of Transportation worked with these same partners to restore highways completely washed away from the same work areas. The resulting symbiosis created a new multi-agency standard of practice.
Learn more and view the webinar on nawm.org.
Building and Sustaining Relationships and Community Networks
This 60-minute webinar was held on December 12, 2024, and focused on building and sustaining relationships and community networks. Relationships and conversations are easy to start and can start for a variety of reasons—participating in a planning process, attending a training workshop, mingling at a conference. Once you have started a conversation, however, building and sustaining that conversation and the relationship with those involved in the conversation can be tough. This webinar will focus on two stakeholder groups in New York State: the Wayne County Shoreline Committee and the Hudson Valley Flood Resilience Network. Presenters will share how these groups started, how they have grown, the lessons they have learned as they have iterated, and what it takes to keep stakeholder engagement in the group lively and active.
Learn more and view the webinar on ASFPM’s YouTube channel.
Nature-based Solutions to Coastal Hazards in Florida’s Gulf of Mexico
This 90-minute webinar was held on January 23, 2024, and highlighted coastal green infrastructure projects in Cedar Key, Florida, and the role of these projects in natural hazard mitigation, water quality protection, and habitat enhancement. The City of Cedar Key, Florida is a small municipality (population < 750) with particularly high exposure to climate hazards. Since 2014, the City of Cedar Key and its residents have collaborated with multidisciplinary project teams to develop nature-based solutions to erosion and coastal flooding. The webinar also provided an update on the first of five Advancing the Integration of Clean Water Act Programs with Natural Hazard Mitigation Planning & Implementation training workshops, which was held in Cincinnati in September 2023, and previewed the second workshop, which will be held at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve near St. Augustine, Florida, in November 2024.
Learn more and view the webinar on nawm.org.
How to Build Resilience and Adapt to Future Conditions through Integrated Planning for Flood Resilience
This 90-minute webinar was held on July 26, 2023, and previewed the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS), a process designed to help communities build resilience through plan integration for local decision making. Communities often have many, varied plan documents. These plans do not always work together in an integrated manner (i.e., a goal in one plan might work in opposition to a goal in another), which can lead to development in flood-prone locations increasing the economic and human impacts of disasters. The PIRS process can help you: 1) evaluate your community's network of plans to reduce hazard vulnerability and protect the economic, social and environmental well-being of your community; 2) assign scores to spatially assess the impacts of policies on community resilience; and 3) use these assessments to uncover inconsistencies between the plans and policies to build cohesion and better align policies across plans to improve long term resiliency outcomes.
Learn more and view the webinar on ASFPM’s YouTube channel.
Advancing the Integration of Clean Water Act Programs with Natural Hazard Mitigation Planning & Implementation
This webinar was held on January 17, 2023, and was a 60-minute informational webinar regarding a new project designed to aid states, local communities, and Tribes in integrating their Clean Water Act programs with their natural hazard mitigation programs. This project is being implemented by the National Association of Wetland Managers and the Association of State Floodplain Managers in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Beginning in 2023 and over the course of five years, we will host one annual in-person training workshop in five pre-determined regions. This introductory webinar included a background discussion of water and natural hazard mitigation, an overview of current EPA resources to get started, and an outline of the goals and processes of this project in addressing deeper needs. There was 30 minutes for Q&A and information on the community recommendation process for those interested in attending a workshop.
Learn more and view the webinar on nawm.org.