Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program (RCPGP)

The primary objective of the Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program (RCPGP) is to build state and local capacity to manage catastrophic incidents by improving and expanding regional collaboration for catastrophic incident preparedness. The National Response Framework (4th Edition or superseding edition) defines a catastrophic incident as any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, or government functions. The regional interdependencies of effective prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery activities require a cohesive regional approach to catastrophic planning, to include community-level stakeholder involvement to maximize both regional and community-level resilience. Communities provide data on their proficiency across 32 core capabilities through the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment/Stakeholder Preparedness Review (THIRA/SPR), after-action reports, and other preparedness data. FEMA’s evaluation of Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 project proposals will be measured against core capability gaps identified through relevant THIRA/SPR reports and the potential impact the proposed project will have on improving those capabilities. To evaluate program performance, FEMA will measure the percent change in targeted capability gaps and percent improvement in the Housing, Community Resilience, and Long-Term Vulnerability Reduction core capabilities, as reported through the required THIRA/SPR covering the community. Thus, FEMA will rely upon the award recipient to develop performance measures and targets that are specific to their preparedness needs, based on the applicable THIRA/SPR results. FEMA will compare the community’s current baseline capability level of the Housing, Community Resilience, and/or Long-Term Vulnerability Reduction core capabilities against the capability level as reported at the end of the grant. Baseline capability assessments will be taken from the calendar year 2023 THIRA/SPR data; end of the grant performance data will be drawn from the calendar year 2027 THIRA/SPR data. The capability assessments FEMA will use in the RCPGP performance analysis are guided by the standard measures listed below (the applicant will provide the relevant (#)s and (time)s based on their current level of capability and desired/target level of capability that will be achieved with RCPGP grant funds). 1. Housing: Within (#) (time) of an incident, (#) people requiring long-term housing, including (#) people with access and functional needs requiring accessible long-term housing, find and secure long-term housing. 2. Community Resilience: •Within (#) (time), (#) households are covered by risk-appropriate insurance, including homeowners, flood, windstorm, and seismic. •Every (#) (time - frequency), conduct (#) outreach events or activities to increase awareness of locally significant threats and hazards to help the residents be more prepared to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from those events. 3. Long Term Vulnerability Reduction: Every (#) (time), (#) jurisdictions review their building codes, and, if necessary, enact or update risk-appropriate (i.e., concerning the risk faced by that particular area), disaster resilient building codes (see FEMA’s Building Codes Documents for more information). Recognizing that capability needs can vary significantly across different jurisdictions and there may be better ways to measure the effectiveness of a project against a specific core capability, the performance measures listed above should be viewed as examples only. Applicants are permitted to develop their own performance measures to suit the unique capability evaluation needs of the covered communities. As stated above, FEMA will compare the community’s current baseline capability level of the Housing, Community Resilience, and/or Long-Term Vulnerability Reduction core capabilities against the capability level as reported at the end of the grant. Therefore, the only requirement is that the customized performance measure enables a quantitative comparison of the applicable capability both before and after completion of the funded project.