Planning for Hazards: Land Use Solutions for Colorado enables counties and municipalities to prepare for and mitigate multiple hazards by integrating resilience and hazard mitigation principles into plans, codes, and standards related to land use and the built environment. This guide provides detailed, Colorado-specific information about how to assess a community’s risk level to hazards and how to implement numerous land use planning tools and strategies for reducing a community’s risk.
Hazards are occurring more frequently in Colorado, and with greater severity. Experts believe this trend will continue; therefore, this guide helps Colorado to be more resilient and able to protect its residents and property from the devastating impacts of natural and human-caused hazards. This guide provides detailed descriptions of a range of land use planning mechanisms that can be used to reduce risk to hazards.
The Colorado Department of Local Affairs led the development of this guide, working with an Advisory Committee comprised of representatives from state and federal agencies, local government, and other subject-matter experts in hazard mitigation and land use planning. The Advisory Committee met three times throughout the course of the project and provided guidance and valuable input at critical milestones, identified key resources, and reviewed interim deliverables. The result is this guide that includes information from Colorado’s leading experts on the subject, and represents varying community sizes, locations, and values.
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The guide is organized as follows:
- Planning Framework. This sets the foundation for why and how land use planning can address hazards through various approaches.
- Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment. This chapter is a how-to guide for preparing the risk assessment. Detailed information on identifying which hazards might affect a particular community (including detailed descriptions for each hazard) is provided in the Appendix, Hazards in Colorado. The following hazards are addressed in this guide:
- Planning Tools and Strategies. Several categories of specific land use planning tools and strategies are explored, including individual profiles for each tool that describe what hazards the tool addresses, how to use the tool, and which communities have already implemented the tool. For many of the planning tools and strategies, model code language and commentary is provided to illustrate how to implement the various tools through regulatory mechanisms. A table summarizing all the planning tools and strategies profiled in this guide is included at the beginning of the Planning Tools and Strategies chapter. The tools are divided into the following categories:
- Models and Commentary. Many of the tools identified in Chapter 4 are supplemented in this chapter with actual sample language for communities to examine. The models include model language as well as commentary on the policies and regulations.
- Moving Forward. This chapter is focused on implementation and provides helpful tips and resources for communities to move the ball forward on assessing risk, working with the local residents, selecting appropriate tools and strategies, and identifying available funding and technical assistance sources.