The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Mitigation Grant Program

Natural disasters have become more frequent and destructive. In 2020, the United States experienced the most billion-dollar disasters ever, with a total cost of $96.4 billion. Moreover, disaster damaged some communities-most notably, low-income and disadvantaged communities-more than others. Much of the disruption and damage caused by these disasters could have been reduced through mitigation-that is, predisaster actions known to reduce damage and ease recovery. The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant award program is intended to help communities undertake this mitigation. Authorized by Congress in 2018 and administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the program includes equity considerations alongside risk reduction, which represents a significant break with past policy and practice and foreshadows a new approach to building community resilience. How to meet these goals is the focus of this report, in which the authors identify ways for BRIC to develop a multihazard, forward-looking, risk-based approach to mitigation that also incorporates issues of equity and community well-being in its application and evaluation processes.