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Appendix A. Recommendations for Incorporating an “Equity Lens” into the San Mateo County Multijurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan The following information summarizes the options that Tetra Tech is recommending to the Core Planning Team (CPT) for the update to the San Mateo County Multijurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan, on how to integrate a social equity lens into the standard hazard mitigation planning process, without impacting the timeline. Before presenting these recommendations, the key points Tetra Tech would like to emphasize are:  This is a multi-jurisdictional scope plan that included both municipal and special purpose district planning partners. While both are defined as “local governments” under the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, each has very different responsibilities and roles mitigating the impacts from hazards.  Addressing social vulnerability is not a requirement for Local Hazard Mitigation Plans prescribed under 44CFR, section 201.6.  There are distinct limitations regarding data available to assess social vulnerability in the context of what is required for a local hazard mitigation plan. With these points in mind, the recommendations provided below have been separated into Standard elements and Optional elements. The standard elements are ways the plan can enhance acknowledging the concepts and principles of an “equity lens” without disrupting the standard protocols applied for risk ranking and action planning. The optional elements are enhancements that would impact the risk ranking and action planning protocols and would be considered “optional” be each planning partner based on their desire to utilize the equity lens concepts for this plan update. Tetra Tech feels very strongly that the only way for this process to not appear as being a forced directive from the County, is to give each planning partner the option to adopt the proposed protocols. The Overview of the recommendations are as follows: Standard Elements Regional Profile: Volume 1, Part 1, Chapter 4 of the plan provides a regional profile of the entire planning area broken down into the following sections:  Historical Overview  Major Past Hazard Events  Physical Setting  Development  Demographics  Economy Recommendation: Following the “demographic” section of Chapter 4, create a new section titled “Social Vulnerability and Hazard Mitigation”. This section will be utilized to frame how the social vulnerability lens will be applied to this hazard mitigation plan update. This section should clearly outline the Planning Partnership’s understanding of social vulnerability, identify the metrics (indicators) that will be utilized to measure it, and identify the gaps in data that create challenges for inclusion in the mitigation planning process. This section of the plan will be very important as it will set the table for how social equity will be addressed by this plan. Where the equity lens will be applied and where it won’t. It will very clearly state the limitations in assessing social vulnerability based on the type of data available and how it can or cannot interface with standard best management practices for hazard mitigation planning risk assessment and ranking. It is also this section where we could attempt to address “historic injustices” in a qualitative, overarching manner, dependent upon data available to support this discussion.