Tag: Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan

Meet CPW Student: Stacy Ludington

Posted on by Julia Havens

Where were you born and where do you call home?Community Planning Workshop Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience CPW OPDR Stacy Ludington
I was born in Greensboro, NC but didn’t live there long. I call Eugene my west coast home, but Blacksburg, VA my hometown. “Hometown” is a bit of a stretch though, considering I attended 16 different schools before 9th grade. That’s my fun fact about myself.

What’s your favorite pig-out food?
I LOVE the fries from Falling Sky, a brewery restaurant that is located way too close to my house for my cholesterol health. I’m also guilty of occasionally eating ice cream for breakfast.

In which graduate program are you enrolled?
I’m working towards my Master of Community and Regional Planning and focusing on the mitigation of natural disasters, particularly those related to climate change. I’m also finding a strong interest in identifying ways organizations can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions though conducting GHG Inventories and life cycle assessments.

What Community Service Center program(s) are you working with?
Up till now, I’ve worked with the Community Planning Workshop, which has been the best experience of my program thus far. My CPW project, which I continued into the summer, was for the Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience (OPDR). The Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience (OPDR) is an applied research program working toward the mission of creating a disaster resilient and sustainable state.

What are you doing for the Community Service Center (CSC)?
I worked on a team that updated the Jefferson County Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan (NHMP), which forms the foundation for a county or city’s long-term strategy to reduce disaster losses and break the cycle of disaster damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage through hazard mitigation. Hazard mitigation is any sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to people, property and the local economy. NHMPs must be updated every five years in order to stay compliant with FEMA requirements. Over the summer I developed a final draft of the Jefferson County Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan (NHMP), which was pre-approved by FEMA on December 10th of 2013 and is now awaiting city and county adoption. Currently I’m assisting with the update of the Oregon NHMP and will soon be involved with the creation of a NHMP update training series for local officials.

How does your involvement with the Community Service Center relate to or inform your education?
My work on this project introduced me to the field of planning for natural disasters, which greatly interests me, partially how it relates to climate-related natural disasters that can affect planning such as sea level rise.

What did you get for your birthday?
My dad sent me a new hiking pack filled with everything I could possibly need to track down and find Big Foot. It’s been a running joke that instead of moving to Oregon for school, I was really on a journey of self-discovery, which involved finding Sasquatch.

Where can we ‘cyber-stalk’ you?
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stacyludington

 

It’s about the Community by Matthew S. McCluney

Posted on by Admin
Jefferson County Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan Update Steering Committee, April 28, 2013.
Photo Courtesy of CSC Natural Hazards Mitigation Team

 It’s about the Community by Matthew S. McCluney

The Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan (NHMP) team’s CSC project centers around the communities within Jefferson County, for whom the project was created, and upon whose shoulders the success of the project depends entirely.   The community and public agency representatives on our steering committee are the stakeholders who are essential to the process of the NHMP’s update.

The team’s task is to update Jefferson County’s Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan, in order to achieve eligibility for federal FEMA grant funding for mitigation projects with the County.  However, as graduate students from areas outside the County we are not there to dictate the process or dominate the discussion.  Our hope is quite the opposite.

We have worked hard to depend upon the feedback and expertise from our steering committee members who live in the County and know it well.  The steering committee is comprised of men and women from all areas of the hazard management spectrum: from Fire Chiefs, Public Works Directors, and Emergency Managers to Tribal representatives and Utility Company representatives.

Our intention is that our plan update appropriately reflects the specific needs and circumstances in Jefferson County.  We hope this community-based approach becomes a recipe for an efficient and relevant plan update.  Once we have completed the plan update, it is left for Jefferson County to put it into action.  Our underlying goal is that the community stakeholders will become invested in the process and see the plan through to implementation for years after we are gone.

Meet our Students: Matthew McCluney / Community and Regional Planning

More about the Community Planning Workshop(CPW)