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Emergency managers have the important responsibility of planning and implementing mitigation policies and programs to reduce losses to life and property. To accomplish these goals, they must use limited time and resources to ensure the communities they serve have adequately mitigated against potential disasters. As a result, it is common to collaborate and coordinate with a wide variety of partner agencies and community organizations. While it is well established that strengthening relationships and increasing familiarity improve coordination, this article advances that narrative by providing direct insights on the ways a select group of local, state, and federal emergency managers view relationships with other mitigation stakeholders. Using insights from a 1-day workshop hosted at the University of Delaware to gather information from mitigation stakeholders, this article provides a discussion of commonalities and challenges workshop participants identified with other stakeholder groups. These insights can inform other emergency managers about potential collaborators and coordination opportunities with similar stakeholders in their own communities. 

Abstract We hypothesize that for disaster risk mitigation, many households, despite being aware of their risk and possible mitigation actions, never seriously consider doing anything about them. In mitigation-focused decisions, since there is no equivalent to warning messages, the decision process is likely to evolve over an extended time. We explore what activates hurricane mitigation protective action decisions through three research questions: (1) to what extent are homeowners unengaged in protective action decision making? (2) What homeowner characteristics are associated with lack of engagement? And (3) to what extent do different life events trigger engagement in the decision-making process? We use the Precaution Adoption Process Model to conceptualize engagement as distinct from decision making; the broader protective action decision-making literature to explore drivers of engagement; and Life Course Theory to examine potential transitions from unengaged to engaged. We use survey data of homeowners in North Carolina to examine these questions empirically. Findings suggest that one-third of respondents had never engaged in protective action decisions, that life experiences differ in their occurrence frequency and effect on households’ mitigation decisions, and that some events, such as renovating, reroofing, or purchasing a home may offer critical moments that could be leveraged to encourage greater engagement in mitigation decision making.