IBHS News Releases

Tampa – Kaori Yoshida, a recent graduate of Florida State University, has been awarded $1,000 by the Institute for Business & Home Safety for her work in the area of hazards planning.

Her award was presented this week at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) conference in Leuven, Belgium.  This was the third year IBHS and ACSP teamed up to offer a scholarship award to encourage planners to include natural hazards loss reduction in their research and practice.

Ms. Yoshida’s award was based on her paper reporting the findings from a survey of 230 small businesses conducted in Duval County, Florida.  The survey was designed to identify the factors that facilitate and constrain hazard mitigation by small businesses.

Yoshida and FSU professor Robert E. Deyle found lack of access to expertise was the principal constraint to hazard mitigation initiatives by small businesses. They also found that perceived exposure to hazards is an important determinant of taking such initiatives, but that many small business owners do not have accurate perceptions of their natural hazard exposure.

Ms. Yoshida received her master's of science degree from FSU in 2002.  The paper is based on research she completed as a Federal Emergency Management Agency Mitigation Planning Fellow.

Yoshida is now a mitigation planner with the Florida Department of Community Affairs where she is responsible for coordinating the State Hazard Mitigation Plan Advisory Team, which includes officials from federal, state and local governments, as well as other public and private organizations.  She also advises 11 counties on local mitigation planning and implementations. 

IBHS is a national nonprofit engineering, research and communications initiative of the insurance industry.  Its mission is to reduce deaths, injuries, property damage, economic losses and human suffering caused by natural disasters.  For more information, visit the IBHS web site, www.disastersafety.org.