WRA was hired to provide grant writing services as part of Napa County’s portfolio of funding requests to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) for hazardous fuels management to reduce the risk to Napa County in the event of catastrophic wildfire. Since 2017, Napa County has experienced frequent, repeated, and devastating wildfires, including the Atlas, Tubbs, Nuns, and Glass fires. In coordination with the County and CAL FIRE, WRA wrote four distinct sub‐applications, totaling more than $40 million in federal requests. WRA further developed the notice of intents (NOI) to produce full sub-applications interacting with Cal OES analysts’ reviews. We developed scopes of work, narrative descriptions, GIS project treatment and benefit area maps, budgets, structure maps, replacement cost estimates, vegetation typing, and project useful life calculations, treatment types and unit costs data, and benefit cost analyses. WRA assisted County staff with online submissions and backup documentation uploads to meet expected federal requirements. WRA provided grant project management support and coordination among multiple entities in the County to develop a suite of highly fundable federal requests.

WRA’s GIS team provided significant support to this effort through spatial data management, spatial analysis, figure creation, inter-team coordination, and data source interpretation. GIS played a critical role in conducting complicated Benefit Cost Analysis efforts which were required by FEMA to demonstrate that the proposed fuel treatment projects met standards required for funding through the HGMP grant program.