Resolution_2025 Kittitas County Hazard Mitigation Plan

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2025 Hazard Mitigation Plan Kittitas County, Washington Chapter 4: Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment 57 • Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) • Federal Emergency Management Agency • National Centers for Environmental Information • National Weather Service • United States Geological Survey • United States Drought Monitor • Hazus (for Earthquake and Flood) • Northwest Avalanche Center • Local repositories This information was analyzed to assess the risk and vulnerability of people, property, the environment, and the jurisdiction’s essential operations from these hazards. Furthermore, a risk ranking was performed for the hazards of concern described in this Plan. The risk ranking is an important step in developing an action plan, as it allows jurisdictions to compare the risk factors from one hazard to another. That comparison provides critical information to use in selecting hazard mitigation actions and their priorities. This process is not only intended to help focus actions on the hazards with the highest ranking, but also to ensure that jurisdictions are aware of the hazards that ranked low yet still pose significant risk. In order to provide an informed and comprehensive ranking of the hazards addressed in this Plan, a number of categories of factors were considered – probability, extent, vulnerability, and impact. The sum of all the weighted factors for the extent, vulnerability, and impact categories were combined into a final consequence score. Probability multiplied by consequence resulted in a total risk score for each hazard. These results were determined by following a data driven quantitative assessment, reviewing, and ranking local knowledge from local subject matter experts, and developing other risk elements by the Core Planning Team based on the data collected. These elements were then aggregated to inform the analysis. At the fundamental level, consequence is an assessment of the potential impact(s) if the hazard incident actually occurs. In this assessment, the consequence of an event (or the impact) will be interdependent on the following factors: • Vulnerabilities (i.e., social, physical, and community conditions) • Capabilities and capacities • Mitigation • Characteristics of the hazard event (i.e., magnitude, scale) The frequency/probability of the hazard is not included in assessing the consequence because without the event, there is no consequence or impact. Extent + Vulnerability + Impact = Consequence Consequence x Probability = Total Risk Score