Mapping Successes: The Tropical Storm Allison Recovery Project (TSARP )

Outreach:

Activities

The HCFCD engages in continual outreach efforts and has implemented a two-way communication strategy. At least four of the County’s 100 Flood Control District staff work full-time on communication efforts. A number of others staff members work on communication and outreach activities part-time, particularly planning office staff.

Community outreach and input were particularly important to the project. All impacted communities in Harris County were notified and invited to participate in the mapping project. An introductory briefing was held for Flood Plain Administrators. Communities also participated through frequent meetings with FEMA, HCFCD, and the TSARP team. Several advisory committees further encouraged continual public involvement.

The Executive Committee included the Mayor’s office, political liaisons, and executive level staff. This committee was the first to receive new information to avoid surprises in the media, and TSARP solicited input from this committee on suggested objectives. Just as important, TSARP staff reviewed political pitfalls that might have arisen within other committee meetings, outside discussions or from the media, and became politically savvy of possible obstacles to the flood study.

The Technical Committee included engineers, surveyors, technical personnel and societies, and individuals from a local university. The goal was to share, assess and analyze technical information. This two-way discussion ensures visibility and accuracy of technical findings.

The Users Group included stakeholders directly affected by products, such as floodplain administrators. The goal was to seek advice to ensure end products were user-friendly. This committee was established during the summer of 2001 at the Disaster Field Office (DFO).

The Stakeholders Committee included vocal members of general public. TSARP encouraged supporters and dissenters to attend. Invitations were sent to the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), homeowners associations, environmental groups, property development groups, insurance agent associations, mortgage brokers & bankers, and the local universities and ethnically diverse societies.

The Stakeholder and User groups committees met quarterly, and the other two committees met semi-monthly. By January, TSARP merged the Users Group and Stakeholders committees into one large committee.

The HCFCD staff worked to create an open, interactive exchange for committee members. Rather than taking a confrontational stance when heated questions were directed to HCFCD staff, often the staff would open the question up to a member of the audience to generate discussions.

Post-Preliminary Phase: TSARP tapped into resources outside of the flood mapping community to discover outreach opportunities. For example, TSARP participated in a May 2003 Rice University conference to release documents to a technical audience. Engineers working on the project submitted technical documents to Rice for discussion.

The TSARP worked to ensure that the general public, technical users, and all other stakeholder groups were made aware of flood hazard maps and were included in the review process of the preliminary maps. They used local venues such as universities, libraries, and convention centers to hold forums and open meetings. The efforts to inform and engage the public, technical experts and local officials was designed to gather accurate, relevant information and present in a manner that would ensure acceptance of the maps. Paper copies of the DFIRM were delivered to impacted communities. In addition, each community received a CD containing: Flood Insurance Study Text, Flood Profiles, ESRI Export, ESRI Shape Files, DFIRM Panel TIF, DFIRM Panel PDF, and Project Metadata.