Division Awards

The inaugural Distinguished Service Award was given to its namesake, Jennifer Ellison. Jennifer is a planner at the Polk County, IA Public Works Department. Jennie was our first secretary-treasurer. In this role, she was instrumental to standing the Division up and developing processes and procedures that set us up for long-term success. 

Rich Roths is a leading player in our professional development committee. When we lost our podcast host, Rich stepped up to lead the effort. Rich is also heading up an effort to develop a program of outreach from the division to university planning schools. In his semi-retirement, he has carved out a meaningful role that has made the rest of us proud. He is a model of productive volunteerism in retirement.

Allison Hardin is a founding member - and leader - of the Division. She was among our first Executive Committee Members, leading us in our formative years as our Chair. Allison also advocated for our involvement in the NOAA Digital Coast Project, which won a Divisions Council Award.

Kelly has been a member of the Professional Development Committee and a committed volunteer for years. Through job and role changes, she's steadfastly made time to help support all HMDR members in her spare time. Kelly is the Division's webinar coordinator, a role she originated and has helped institutionalize over the past few years. Kelly challenges us to provide high-quality, diverse educational opportunities to bring our members. She's helped us be thoughtful about what content we showcase and helped us document our processes so that anyone can lead a webinar.

For more than 20 years, Bob led the recovery and adaptation of the major regional park in New Orleans (1300 acres) responding to natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and other disasters such as COVID-19. After Katrina, Bob implemented the adopted master plan which emphasized rebuilding sustainably by utilizing bio-swales and wetland projects, solar panels for shelters, replacing active recreation facilities with park land to absorb rainwater and completely revamping the park's financial platform to provide reliable capital and operating funding. The plan and its implementation received a national planning award from APA in 2010. This effort and the various recovery and resilience strategies are featured in the book: "New Orleans City Park: From Tragedy to Triumph".

Barton & Loguidice (B&L) and Southern Tier 8 Regional Board (ST8) partnered with the Village of Owego in Tioga County, New York to develop a jurisdictional annex to the county’s hazard mitigation plan that went beyond the minimum. The Village’s mitigation plan met multiple goals in a single plan: meeting the mitigation planning requirements; giving the community points in the New York State Climate Smart Communities (CSC) Certification Program and supporting their the National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System (CRS) score. The project team modified the Village’s annex meet CSC action documentation requirements and to meet the CRS 510 process for community informed floodplain management planning. Through the local leadership of a J. Nucci Consulting, LLC, the annex will likely generate 41 CSC points, which is a third of the way towards CSC bronze status. The Village annex may also yield approximately half of a CRS class. By leveraging public-private partnerships, the Village of Owego will succeed in becoming a more resilient community.

Jim Schwab, FAICP, is a founding member of the Division and served as Division Chair. For many years, Jim served as manager of the APA Hazards Planning Center, where he led numerous projects, many of which resulted in well-known PAS Reports on various aspects of hazards planning. Since 2017, he has worked as a part-time independent planning consultant (based in Chicago), public speaker, and adjunct assistant professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Iowa, a position he has held since 2008. In 2018, Jim was the recipient of ASFPM’s Goddard-White Award, its highest honor. Jim’s ongoing commitment to volunteer work continues to support the Division, including leading the production of a documentary video on the importance of planners and planning related to disasters. 

This first-of-its-kind preparedness plan sets a bold state-level vision for preparing for extreme heat. The plan recognizes the complexity of extreme heat hazards up front, tying together increases in temperatures with affordable, safe housing and the built environment’s impact on heat events. The effort also consolidated data on heat to support decision making. Supported by collaborations from Arizona State University, the plan not only has specific recommendations to mitigate, respond, and recover from extreme heat, but also conducted a nearly year-long stakeholder collaboration effort around a topic that does not have formal planning or policy frameworks. The Plan has already been used at the federal level as an example for how best to address extreme heat.

Jim is truly one of the founders of the field, pushing planners to get involved and understand their role in the disaster space for his entire career. Jim has steadily bent the focus of the profession towards hazard mitigation and disaster recovery, helping realize the critical function of planners in addressing threats to their communities from hazards and climate change. Jim quite literally wrote the book(s) on the field, including 1992’s planning for Post Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction (updated and refreshed in 2014!) and Hazard Mitigation: Integrating Best Practices into Planning (2017). Jim’s commitment to teaching the next generation is evident, with 16 years of teaching on hazard mitigation and disaster recovery at the University of Iowa. And, beyond that, Jim’s service to this division is significant. He’s dedicated much of his retirement to helping us, whether as a board member or as the producer on our video project, Planning to Turn the Tide.