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The Rural Capacity Index provides scholars, practitioners, and policymakers a practical tool to identify and respond to disparities in local government capacity that constrain rural disaster resilience efforts.
“Programs like BRIC really help us avoid these ballooning disaster costs that we’ve seen, by simply being more proactive,” says Kristin Smith, a researcher who studies disaster funding at Headwaters Economics, a think tank that studies development and land management decisions. “We pay a little now or a lot tomorrow.”
“They might be economically disadvantaged, where these disasters can just instigate downward spirals,” said Kristin Smith, a researcher and policy analyst at Headwaters Economics. She said climate change is also causing more smaller disasters that aren’t large enough to warrant federal funding.
A new analysis from Montana think tank, Headwaters Economics, looks at BRIC money four years down the line and finds, nationwide, counties with fewer resources and staff received 19 times less BRIC funding than high-capacity counties.
In May of 2023, GIS instructor and analyst at Montana State University’s Geospacial Core Facility Jackson Rose and Headwaters Economics’ Kristin Smith traveled to Glendive in order to collect light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data along a 1.24-mile span of the east Yellowstone River.