7:30-8:30am | Registration & Breakfast

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8:30-9:15am | Flood Recovery Efforts in Southwest Virginia - C. Eric Young, JD County Administrator, Tazewell County

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Charles "Eric" Young, a Tazewell, Virginia native, graduated from Emory & Henry College, summa cum laude, in 1993, majoring in both Political Science and Economics with a minor in Sociology. Young
interned with the Honorable Glen Williams, Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of
Virginia. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1996 and clerked for Justice
Koontz of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in the summer of 1995. A member of the Virginia State
Bar since 1996, he served as Assistant County Attorney for Tazewell County, Virginia from 2004-2006
and then as County Attorney for Tazewell County from 2006 to 2019. Young was appointed to the
Virginia State Bar Board of Governors for Local Government Law in 2011, serving as Chairman in 2017.
In 2012 Young was designated by the Virginia General Assembly to serve as co-counsel for the Coal and
Gas Severance Tax Reform advisory committee. In 2018 Young was appointed County Administrator for Tazewell County. As County Administrator his duties include acting as the County's Director of Emergency Management.

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9:15-10am | Floodplain Analysis for Infrastructure Projects - Scott Blossom, PE, CFM, LEED AP Owner/Senior Engineer, Blossom Consulting & Engineering

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9:15-10am | Leveraging Resources Protection Areas in CRS - John Saunders, PE, CFM Environmental Programs Administrator, Stafford County

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John leads the Environmental Programs division for Stafford County's Department of Development Services responsible for implementing the County's Virginia Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Programs, MS4, Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act, Dam Safety, and Floodplain Management Programs. John is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute with a Bachelor's of Science in Civil Engineering. He is a licensed professional engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia and a Certified Floodplain Manager.

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Breakdown of the GIS processing and analysis used during Stafford County's 2021 CRS Verification Visit to maximize points under Activity 420 - Open Space Preservation. The presentation will provide a quick overview of Chesapeake Bay Resource Protection Areas (RPA) and how those tie into the open space definitions from the CRS manual and a discussion on the guidance document for crediting SFHA open space for RPAs, dated June 29, 2021.

Further instruction into setting up ArcMap and shapefiles to accurately geo-process areas that are both within the SFHA and RPA and demonstrate the different steps needed to exclude certain areas noted from the guidance document, i.e. previously developed tracts of land.

Results from the analysis and discuss the impact to Stafford County's improvement from a Class 7 to Class 6 community, in large part due to 1128 points awarded for Activity 420 (roughly half of Stafford's total credit, i.e. over three Classes worth of points).

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10-10:15am | Morning Networking Break

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10:15am-11am |  Floodplain Design and Construction with Impacts on Flood Insurance - Kurt Luecke, CFM Flood Mitigation Specialist, Floodproofing.com

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A CFM and Flood Mitigation Specialist for Floodproofing.com where Luecke works directly with all parties involved in floodplain management, design, build, and habitation to help identify compliance issues and find mitigation solutions that mitigate damage, improve recovery time and lower liability risk for site-based or linear projects.

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This course provides insight into the importance of proper foundation flood vents and dry floodproofing techniques for buildings located in a flood zone. It will identify FEMA Technical Bulletins 1, 2, and 3, the National Flood Insurance Program, ASCE 24-14, ICC, and Building Code regulations and standards as they relate to sustaining foundations and overall business continuity in flood hazard areas. The course will also analyze the role of building compliance in securing lower flood insurance rates and what mitigation solutions are available for both residential and non residential structures. After the course, participants will have a thorough understanding of floodproofing options and the important role they play in designing a sustainable structure.

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10:15am-11am | Developing a Substantial Damage Response Plan - Danny Hinson, CFM Senior Mitigation Planner, Tetra Tech

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Danny Hinson has 38 years of experience in floodplain and emergency management programs. Past experience includes managing the Florida Community Rating System state-wide initiative seeking to support over 200 FL CRS communities with annual maintenance and improving their CRS program. Danny also supported the FL Division of Emergency Management by responding as a FDEM Liaison to various counties post disaster. Danny has supported communities around the US with CRS support. Danny was a member of the CRS Task Force for three years (2015-2018) Among his accomplishments, the following show expertise: National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), Community Rating System (CRS), Florida Professional Emergency Manager (FPEM), Addressed national conferences on floodplain management

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The United States has experienced unprecedented natural disasters with significant impacts to structures in the past. Whether it is a hurricane, flood, fire, or another type of incident, addressing substantial damage is a requirement of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). NFIP-participating communities must adopt and enforce a flood damage prevention ordinance that meets or exceeds the NFIP minimum standards found in 44 CFR 60.3. These require substantial damage evaluations based on inspection of structures that have incurred damage of at least 50% of their pre-damage value. Communities can benefit by creating a pre-disaster substantial damage response plan (SDRP) to facilitate the process and enable elected officials and the whole community to better understand the substantial damage process. Disasters are over-whelming to staff and residents are eager to begin making repairs and/or reconstruct with hopes of returning to normal life. The recovery process must follow specific regulations to reduce or eliminate damages due to repetitive flooding. In order to adequately prepare for the after-effects of a disaster, it is crucial to develop a strategy to conduct substantial damage assessments prior to an incident. Approaching substantial damage assessments with a response plan will expedite orderly recovery. Until now, there have been few options to address this type of proactive planning in the floodplain manager’s toolbox. In order to address this, Tetra Tech has developed an approach that uses the framework of a Community Rating System Substantial Damage Plan (SDP) enhanced with a “response” feature to create a functional and potentially CRS creditable SDRP. The SDRP includes a Structure Inventory Database to identify and triage the most likely areas of a community that have damage sufficient to trigger substantial damage inspections. In this workshop, we will review a model SDRP template along with the following Fact Sheets that walk through the process of implementing a SDRP: 1. Why develop a Substantial Damage Response Plan 2. Conducting a Community Assessment 3. Creating a Structure Inventory Database 4. Performing a Tabletop Exercise 5. Deploying the Substantial Damage Response Plan It is not uncommon for a FEMA Regional office to conduct a Community Assessment Visit (CAV) post-incident to evaluate a community’s response to a disaster. Conducting substantial damage assessments as a part of an executed plan, provides documentation of procedures for FEMA much easier for the Floodplain Manager. The same data or findings from the SDRP can be used for projects in the community hazard mitigation plan or LMS.

 

11-11:45am |  Standing up Virginia’s Coastal Resilience Master Plan - Brian Batten, PhD, CFM Senior Associate, Dewberry

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11-11:45am | Incorporating Technology in Flood Mitigation - Mark Slauter Flood Consultant, FloodMapp

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Mark has a Master in Urban & Regional Planning from VCU and currently works with FloodMapp, a flood intelligence software company located in Brisbane, Australia. Prior to working with FloodMapp, Mark held various positions at the VA Department of Emergency Management, the VA Department of Conservation & Recreation, and the VA Department of Environmental Quality.

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Flooding is occurring with increasing frequency; more days of nuisance flooding and more short-duration heavy rainfall events create additional stressors on the functionality of our road infrastructure. While these increased impacts occur in urban, suburban, and rural areas, coastal cities face the additional stressors of tidal fluctuations, limited storm sewer capacities, sea-level rise, or land subsidence. Together, these stressors are forcing resiliency officers, local floodplain managers, and emergency managers to implement creative adaptation techniques. The City of Norfolk, Virginia, collaborated with RISE Resilience Innovations, Waze and FloodMapp in a project that dynamically modeled the various flood factors to implement an operational real-time flood intelligence capability. The outcome was to provide flooded road intelligence to drivers. FloodMapp was able to provide this capability by modifying its existing real-time flood modeling into RoadSafe. The live flooded road data is supplied to the City, then sent to the Waze app for public consumption. This allows the City to inform the public and re-route drivers by virtually closing roads. So far, the system has successfully and safely routed thousands of residents around flooded roads.

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Noon-1pm | LUNCH PROGRAM - ASFPM Updates & 2022 VFMA Awards Ceremony - Necolle Maccherone, CFM Senior Project Manager, Atkins and VFMA Awards Committee

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1-1:45pm | The Long Road to Compliance: RVs in the Floodplain - Whitney McNamara Floodplain Administrator and CRS Coordinator, City of Virginia Beach

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Whitney McNamara is an Environmental Planner for the City of Virginia Beach. She oversaw Virginia Beach's entrance into the Community Rating System as a Class 7 community in 2019, and currently serves as CRS Coordinator and Floodplain Administrator. Whitney graduated from Duke University with a Master of Environmental Management degree with a concentration in Coastal Environmental Management in 2012, and from University of North Carolina Wilmington with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Marine Biology with a Minor in Environmental Studies in 2010.

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A case study detailing steps Virginia Beach has taken to bring four separate RV parks into compliance in the Special Flood Hazard Area. RV parks range from traditional campgrounds, to a 10-10-10 RV Resort on the North Landing River, to a condominium RV community where RV's sell for over $250,000 and required creation of a new zoning classification.

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1-1:45pm | Residential Flood Hazard Mitigation - Education for Adaptation John D. Sargent Chief Executive Officer, Resilient Enterprise Solutions, LLC

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John has three decades of experience in executive management and technical roles in both mature and start-up businesses, with a focus on making businesses scalable and bringing management and technology skills to proactively driven service contractors. He has engaged in consulting and executive management positions for LINC Corporation, TEGG Corporation, and LandOpt, LLC. In 2018, John led a study team commissioned by Ducky Johnson to evaluate the business opportunity for developing, training, and supporting a franchised network of home elevation and flood hazard mitigation service contractors. The findings of the study resulted in the formation of Resilient Enterprise Solutions, LLC, in early 2019, which included Ducky Johnson as a founding member. John leads the RES Home Raising Academy Team, initially funded under a HUD-CDBG grant through the RISE Resilience Challenge of 2019 to promote workforce development in Hampton Roads. With the completion of the RISE project, the RES Home Raising Academy is now expanding its scope of services and coverage area throughout eastern U.S. coastal areas threatened by climate change induced flooding and storm surge. John has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (’88) and a M.S. in Information Networking (’90), both from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.

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Residential flood hazard mitigation projects, esp. structural elevation project funded with public monies, can be a daunting experience for all parties involved. They require a comprehensive approach for education and outreach. We will discuss the state of the art education and outreach framework needed today, leveraging experiences and lessons learned from successes in other marketplaces. Homeowners must understand their available mitigation options and the steps they must proactively undertake to get things started. Best practices of the more experienced local and county governments must be distilled and disseminated to their less experienced counterparts. Design, engineering, and construction service providers require upskilling in industry concepts and the particulars of these projects to meet rising demand while tendering proposals at competitive prices. A centrally administered, proactively delivered education and outreach program is crucial for maximizing homeowner buy-in and participation, reducing friction between stakeholders, and providing the ability to scale up deployments while ensuring safety and maintaining project budgets and schedules.

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1:45-2:30pm | Surviving a FEMA Community Assistance Visit - Kristin Owen, AICP, CFM Floodplain & Dam Safety Manager, Henrico County

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Kristin Owen is the Floodplain & Dam Safety Manager for Henrico County, Virginia and the current president of the Virginia Floodplain Management Association. Kristin has extensive state and local government experience in floodplain management and land use planning. Prior to joining Henrico County, Kristin worked for the Commonwealth of Virginia as the Acting NFIP Coordinator, State CRS Coordinator, and co-chair of the Virginia Silver Jackets team. While in this role, she assisted Governor Northam’s Office with developing and implementing two executive orders aimed to reduce flood risk and increase Virginia’s resiliency to natural hazards. She also partnered with Virginia Tech to create and teach a graduate-level course on local floodplain management, which earned her FEMA’s 2019 Best Innovation/Project Award. Before joining the Commonwealth of Virginia, Kristin was the Planning and Floodplain Administrator for Teton County, Idaho.

Kristin received a Bachelor of Science in Biology from West Virginia University, and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, a Master of Natural Resources, and Graduate Certificates in Watershed Management and Geospatial Information Technology from Virginia Tech. She is an AICP professional planner and a Certified Floodplain Manager.

A FEMA Community Assistance Visit (CAV) is a community visit that serves the dual purpose of providing technical assistance to the community and assuring that the community is adequately enforcing its floodplain management regulations required for National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) participation. A CAV is required prior to a community being eligible to have a verification visit to join the Community Rating System (CRS) program. Henrico County recently went through the CAV process with FEMA Region 3. This presentation will provide an overview of Henrico County’s approach to preparing for their CAV, challenges faced throughout the process, and lessons learned that helped make the CAV a success.

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1:45-2:30pm | Abingdon's Flood Mitigation Plan for Town Creek - Don Rissmeyer, PE, CFM Associate, A Morton Thomas and Associates, Inc.

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Don Rissmeyer is a licensed Professional Engineer in multiple states and a Certified Floodplain Manager with more than 30 years of experience in providing consulting engineering services to municipal stormwater clients at the local, state, and federal level. He is a Past-President of the Virginia Section of ASCE and the Virginia Floodplain Management Association, and a member of the Virginia Municipal Stormwater Association and the Joint Legislative Committee for ACEC Virginia.

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Community Flood Mitigation at the Local Level can be very challenging due to the limited availability of public funds; however, the flooding problems are becoming more and more of a priority to local elected officials. This presentation of the Flood Mitigation Plan for Town Creek will include common sense approaches to evaluating flood risks, and then reducing the impacts of flooding through infrastructure projects that may utilize outside funding sources to help garner local support for those needs through community outreach. Three miles of HEC-RAS modeling for the floodplain were involved and three recommended infrastructure projects are in various stages of completion to consider for approaches to addressing local flooding issues in other communities.

 

2:30-2:45pm | Afternoon Networking Break

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2:45pm-3:30pm | Norfolk Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) Project: Bridging the Gap from Feasibility Study to 35% Design - Matt Fanghella, EIT, CFM Coastal Engineer, City of Norfolk, City Manager’s Office of Resilience

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Matt Fanghella serves as the Coastal Engineer in the City of Norfolk City Manager's Office of Resilience working on the Norfolk USACE Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) Project including design and construction of a new 8.5 mile floodwall and elevation of nearly 1000 privately owned structures across the City. As part of his role, Matt also manages the beach damage assessment program, pre and post storm response during hurricanes and other severe weather events where coastal erosion potential is present. Previously Matt served as City Stormwater Engineer and Project Manager in the City of Suffolk, Virginia where he oversaw several multi-million dollar drainage projects. including championing the first project to integrate a Dig-Once concept integrating both stormwater upgrades and sanitary sewer upgrades within the same project. Matt also recognized the need for and championed the development of a City-wide Resilience Plan and self-studied to become the first Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM) in the City , Matt developed multiple grant applications to receive over half a million dollars in grant and federal funding for drainage and dredging projects. Prior to his time in Suffolk. Matt served as Regional MS4 Coordinator at Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) managing the MS4 Program in the Tidewater Region and also served as the Regional State Safety Officer and on the Pollution Response and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) After Hours Response Team. Matt has earned his designation as an Engineer-in-Training (EIT) in the Commonwealth of Virginia and is a Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM) through the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM). Matt also recently passed his Professional Engineer Exam as well. Matt serves on the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission (HRPDC) Coastal Resiliency Committee, HRPDC Regional Environmental Committee, and HRPDC Stormwater Workgroup collaborating with leaders from other localities and state and federal partners to provide input and technical expertise on flood mitigation, resiliency, stormwater and other drainage and public works projects and initiatives across the Hampton Roads region.

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In 2019, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in collaboration with the City of Norfolk published the final Norfolk Coastal Storm Risk Management Program (CSRM) Feasibility Study. The Feasibility Study recommended construction of a 8.5 mile floodwall, three surge barriers, multiple pump stations, and the structural elevation or floodproofing of nearly 1,000 private structures across the City of Norfolk. Since the publication of the 2019 Feasibility Study, the City and USACE have continued this partnership and entered the Pre-construction Engineering and Design phase to move forward with the largest public project in the City of Norfolk’s history. This massive project will be divided into smaller phases over a proposed 10-year period. Currently, the City and USACE are reviewing the design plans for Phase 1A of the Floodwall Alignment, which will extend from the Berkley Bridge to the Campostella Exit Ramp from Interstate 264, and developing a pilot program of initial structures to elevate as part of the Phase 1A Pilot Program. Matt Fanghella, Coastal Engineer from the City of Norfolk City Manager’s Office of Resilience will provide a project update and highlight lessons learned from the Feasibility Study to the 35% Design Plans. Topics and lessons learned include integrating horizontal construction and vertical construction design elements and timelines within the overall project timeline, developing public outreach tools and data apps soon to be unveiled, developing a Floodplain Management Plan based on post-project conditions, ensuring that projects altogether meet requires for FEMA base flood elevations, the Army Corps’ North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study, and State sea level rise requirements of EO 24 & 45.

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2:45pm-3:30pm | Automating PeakFQ Stream Gage Analysis with Microsoft’s Power Automate Desktop - Jennifer McGee. PE, CFM, GISP Senior Water Resources Engineer, WSP USA

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Ms. McGee is a Water Resources Engineer with WSP USA. She has a background in FEMA’s NFIP program and Public Assistance program for disaster recovery. Her primary work is developing data science applications for engineering projects. She is also the Digital Skills Lead focusing on training Microsoft Office 365 and the Power Platform.

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PeakFQ is a software application developed by the US Geological Survey to complete gage analysis based on Bulletin 17B using stream peak flow data. This desktop-based application reads watstore-formatted files. These can be downloaded for any gage from the USGS National Water Information System by accessing the Web Interface, Peak Streamflow for the Nation site (https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/peak). As part of the Risk MAP program, FEMA has developed an inventory of all mapped miles in the US. This inventory is called the Coordinated Needs Management Strategy (CNMS). CNMS contains basic information about each study’s hydrology, hydraulics, source topography, and much more. Each study in the inventory is given a status of “Valid” and “NVUE Compliant” when the study is newly added or restudied. A set of validation checks are performed every 5 years following the original validation to determine if the flood hazard depicted on the FIRM for that model is still accurate. This is a set of seven (7) critical checks and nine (9) secondary checks for detailed studies, and five (5) checks for approximate studies. The first 2 critical checks are related to stream gage peak flow data: C1: Major change in gage record since effective analysis that includes major flood events C2: Updated and effective peak discharges differ significantly based on confidence limits criteria in FEMA’s G&S To complete a C2 validation check, PeakFQ is used to compare the 100-year discharge for the effective study to the 68% confidence interval of the 100-year discharge for the updated gage data. Therefore, 2 PeakFQ runs are required for each gage with new data. With dozens of previous study validations expiring each month, that amounts to quite a few PeakFQ analysis runs; this is where Power Automate Desktop can help. Power Automate Desktop is one of Microsoft’s low-code platforms that allows users to build workflows that interact with desktop applications. This is a powerful way to automate repetitive tasks for datasets and applications that are not web-enabled nor backed by an Application Programming Interface (API) that would otherwise allow for more traditional programming approaches. Overall, this presentation will first provide a brief background on FEMA’s CNMS program and the PeakFQ application, then provide highlights on how you can use Microsoft’s Power Automate Desktop to complete repetitive tasks with some of the most common actions. For the PeakFQ analysis, this starts with downloading the USGS peak flow data from the web, running the PeakFQ analysis, reading the results file, and saving the key data elements to an Excel table for review and reporting. The final workflow transforms hours of work to just minutes!

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3:30-4:15pm | Nonstructural Flood Mitigation - Balancing Buildings, People and Priorities - Matthew Simons, AICP, CFM Coastal Resiliency Manager, City of Norfolk, City Manager's Office of Resilience

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Matt Simons is an advocate for resilience planning throughout Virginia. A former City Planner for Norfolk,
Matt has spent over a decade serving the residents and stakeholders of Norfolk as a program leader,
serving as Norfolk’s Floodplain Administrator and recently transforming Norfolk within the Community
Rating System of the National Flood Insurance Program; taking Norfolk from last place in Virginia, to first
place as of April 1st, 2022. This program provides Norfolk residents with nearly $2M in total annual flood
insurance savings, making flood insurance more affordable for Norfolk’s most vulnerable residents. Matt
Simons is a Certified Floodplain Manager, an AICP-certified Urban Planner, and is serving as Interim
President for the Virginia Floodplain Managers Association. Since the end of 2021, Matt has joined the
Norfolk City Manager’s Office of Resilience, and the Resilience Office has announced the start of a $1.7
billion dollar project to protect Norfolk from catastrophic flooding through construction of multiple flood
walls around the City. The project was recently awarded nearly $400M in federal funds through President
Biden’s Infrastructure Law.

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3:30-4:15pm | eLOMA – A Collaborative Tool for Licensed Professionals, Communities, and FEMA - David Mummert eLOMA Coordinator, Michael Baker International

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David Mummert has over 20 years of National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) experience with Michael Baker International in the MT-1 (LOMA) Group. He is a graduate of St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a degree in Biology with a specialization in Environmental Science. He is currently the Northwind Resource Consulting (NWRC) eLOMA Coordinator for all 10 FEMA Regions, Technical Manager for the NWRC MT-1 Group, and Subject Matter Expert for LOMA and eLOMA processing through FEMA’s Mapping Information Platform (MIP) website.

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) eLOMA (Electronic Letter of Map Amendment) tool to provides licensed land surveyors and professional engineers with an internet-based system to submit a variety of LOMA requests as a faster alternative to using the standard application process. The eLOMA tool is available to any licensed professional who registers through FEMA's Mapping Information Platform (MIP), which is located online at https://hazards.fema.gov. This presentation will: Provide a summary of the eLOMA tool, Outline improvements to the eLOMA process such as the expansion of accepted request types and application tracking via the new user workbench, Highlight plans for future user trainings and web-based learning opportunities, Provide insight into how the accuracy of eLOMA submittals correlates directly to audit frequency, Discuss the steps necessary to achieve eLOMA Super User status to reduce the number of audited submittals.

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