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IAEM AEM: Recovery and Mitigation

IAEM AEM · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Recovery and Mitigation

What this domain tests

This domain asks you to distinguish response, recovery, and mitigation, and to know the frameworks and funding that govern each.

Core rules

  • Recovery is not a phase that begins when response ends; recovery planning should start before the disaster.
  • The National Disaster Recovery Framework organizes recovery around six Recovery Support Functions: Community Planning and Capacity Building; Economic; Health and Social Services; Housing; Infrastructure Systems; and Natural and Cultural Resources. RSFs are not ESFs; they are led by designated coordinating agencies and mirrored at state and local levels.
  • Recovery periods are usually described as short-term, intermediate, and long-term. A pre-disaster recovery plan sets priorities, recovery time objectives, and decisions made in advance, such as temporary housing sites, debris sites, and waiver authorities.
  • Mitigation reduces or eliminates long-term risk. The six techniques are prevention, property protection, public education and awareness, natural resource protection, emergency services, and structural projects.
  • The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 requires a FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plan for most mitigation grant eligibility, and the plan must be updated at least every five years.
  • Major mitigation funding: Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (post-disaster, tied to the declaration), Pre-Disaster Mitigation, and Flood Mitigation Assistance. Projects are ranked using benefit-cost analysis.

Worked example

After a flood, debris removal and emergency protective measures are Public Assistance Categories A and B - response and recovery work. Buying out and permanently conserving five repetitively flooded homes is mitigation: it is funded through HMGP, requires a current approved local mitigation plan, and must pass a benefit-cost review.

Traps

Treating RSFs as ESFs; assuming a mitigation plan is approved forever; confusing mitigation with preparedness (stockpiling supplies is preparedness); and assuming every recovery cost is federally reimbursed.