These guides are designed to provide the type of information states and communities need to initiate and maintain a planning process that will result in safer communities.

Understanding Your Risks: Identifying Hazards & Estimating Losses is part of a series of guides that will help you identify, plan, and evaluate measures that can reduce the impacts of natural hazards in your community or state through a comprehensive and orderly process known as Natural Hazard Mitigation Planning. This guide provides step-by-step guidance on how to perform a risk assessment. Through a series of general and hazard-specific guidance and worksheets, the guide will help State, Indian Tribal, and local planning teams determine:
(1) which natural hazards could affect a jurisdiction;
(2) what areas of the jurisdiction are vulnerable to the hazards;
(3) what assets will be affected; and
(4) to what degree they will be affected, as measured through dollar losses.

This Guide is multi-hazard in scope, addressing flood, earthquake, tsunami, tornado, coastal storm, landslide and wildfire hazards. For communities dealing with multiple hazards, guidance is also provided on how to develop a composite loss estimate. Once the risk assessment is completed, State. Indian Tribal, and local officials will have the information necessary to develop a strategy and plan for reducing their losses.

The guidelines are developed for US, but they are applicable in other places too.