WHAT IS SILVER JACKETS?
Silver Jackets is an innovative program that provides an opportunity to consistently bring together multiple state, federal, and sometimes tribal and local agencies to learn from one another and jointly apply resources to reduce flood risk. The Silver Jackets teams are state-led interagency teams.
No single agency has the complete solution - each has one or more pieces, similar to squares in a patchwork quilt. The Silver Jackets program can be viewed as the quilting bee, the forum where all agencies come together to put their programs together and implement a solution. To achieve communities that are sustainable and resilient to natural disasters, especially flooding, partnerships are an important part of success.
The vision of the Nevada Silver Jackets team is to serve as a catalyst in developing comprehensive and sustainable solutions to flood hazard issues, including mitigation planning, flood hazard mapping, risk reduction activities, response and recovery planning.
The core agencies will work with other State and Federal agencies to:
- Enable effective and efficient sharing of information;
- Increase and improve flood hazard identification, assessment, communication and outreach among local, state and federal agencies;
- Foster leveraging of available agency resources;
- Develop more comprehensive state flood risk management policies and strategies;
- Facilitate strategic, integrated, life-cycle mitigation actions to reduce the threat, vulnerability and consequences of flooding in the State of Nevada;
- Support Federal disaster response and recovery through development of mitigation strategies to capitalize on post-disaster mitigation opportunities;
- Promote wise stewardship of the taxpayers' investments.
The team's goals are to:
- Ensure continuous collaboration for flood mitigation, response and recovery activities before, during and after flooding.
- Provide a forum for examining all types of solutions for flood risk management, including both non-structural and structural solutions.
- Learn about partner agency programs, identify limitations and opportunities, and combine programs to create integrated, comprehensive and sustainable solutions.
- Create a multi-agency technical resource for state and local agencies.
- Provide assistance in implementing high priority flood mitigation actions identified in the Nevada State Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan.
- Improve flood risk communication and outreach, present a unified inter-governmental message, and better educate and advise our mutual customers.
- Identify and facilitate improvements to existing programs, policies and processes.
- Identify other collaboration opportunities to combine resources and identify gaps in order to minimize duplication of effort.
- Catalog and share information on past and future flood projects and initiatives.
- Prioritize current and future initiatives individually and collectively.