Totalfloodriskmanagement.org

Meet the Founder

Brian Rast is a water resources project manager in Overland Park, KS. He has two adopted sons and dog. His experience as a floodplain leader, connector, and mentor to guide interagency teams, has helped communities in flood risk management, analysis, and modeling since 1993. He transitioned to consulting from a 21-year career at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Kansas City District, to begin this important advocacy.

Brian is a registered professional engineer, graduating in 1994 from Kansas State University with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a minor in natural resources and environmental science. He received an Engineering Management M.S. degree from the University of Kansas. He began work in civil site development doing grading plans and engineering for stormwater systems and detention basins. Also, while consulting, he specialized in HEC-2, HEC-RAS, and HEC-HMS modeling between 1993-2004.

His work at the USACE diversified into planning, while being a project manager. This led to feasibility studies, decision documents, and various water resources projects for flood risk management. He was selected for the year-long Planning Associates Program training in 2007 at the USACE Institute for Water Resources (IWR). Following that he had his first Headquarters assignment, assisting with the roll-out of the USACE National Flood Risk Management Program. In 2011, the USACE established the Silver Jackets Program partnering with state and federal agencies to improve flood resilience, and Brian served as the Lead Silver Jackets Coordinator for two teams in Kansas and Missouri. The Kansas team won Team of the Year in 2011.

In the second half of his tenure, his work focused less on General Investigations and much more on Silver Jackets. Between 2014-2017 he was a board member of the USACE National Nonstructural Committee. He served on the USACE Levee Safety Committee, Public Awareness and Communication Team for almost 2 years as well. He developed a variety of flood awareness and flood mitigation tools that led to selection as the 2019 Silver Jackets Coordinator of the Year. In 2022 he served on the Department of Defense Climate Action Team. In 2023, he was selected as the first Endowed Chair for the National Flood Risk Management Program at USACE IWR. The following year, Brian made a difficult decision to take the Deferred Resignation Program, as flexible benefits were taken away from federal civil servants. He left USACE to provide more care for his autistic son. Later, he was awarded the Civilian Service Commendation Medal in 2025. The USACE career was an extremely valuable experience and one that he shares whenever possible.

He continues his work with several initiatives. The Total Flood Risk Management (FRM) initiative is one of several work projects, including illustrative graphics, media, and technical writing. Brian is a frequent presenter at floodplain manager conferences, including ASFPM, and serves on committees for the National Hazard Mitigation Association. He also serves the Anthropocene Alliance, such as their state team initiatives. Brian does consulting with engineering firms, as well.

(links to the content below only active for Subscribers)

Past Webinars by Brian at USACE

Webinars and onsite training by Brian Rast while at USACE. Some Silver Jackets webinar archives are unavailable, thus not listed. (Available in paid content)

• NFRMP Workshop, Development of Floodplain Management Plans, 2013.
• NFRMP Workshop, Road To Resilience, 2015.
• Public Involvement Pilots, Creating shared responsibility: Talking about flood risk in Manhattan, Kansas, March 23, 2015
• Planning Community of Practice, Training Resources, Floodplain Management Plans- A Short Course, April 6, 2017.
• Silver Jackets Webinar, Kansas Healthy Watersheds. August 25, 2022.
• Silver Jackets Webinar, Best Practices of State Teams. November 13, 2023.

Past Articles by Brian at USACE

Articles by Brian Rast while at USACE are listed below. The current and past articles, in Silver Jackets BUZZ and Flood Risk Management Newsletter, are hosted (and searchable) in the paid content section.

Spring Creek Flood Solutions. This is a model document providing actions for the city council to consider taking, specifically building capacity to leverage flood mitigation grants.

Glossary for Flood Management Plans. This comprehensive glossary is written for the public and includes icons to help visualize the terms and definitions.

Florence Levee Nonstructural Analysis. This document takes a natural valley scenario and analyzes the buildings in the levee protected area and provides 3 priority action steps for each. The document was a public involvement tool used in conjunction with the educating the city council on the flood risk and need to accredit the levee.

The Flood Quiz. This is a public engagement tool. Based on the Hamilton County, Indiana, 86-questions, this is a 10-question quiz that may be used to begin engagement with the public audience. The objective is to make them aware of topics they should know about through engagement in a short quiz. The quiz is offered with the answers underlined and in another PDF for printing out for the public, and also without the answers. Page one offers a table tent that will print as well.

Video/Webinars by Brian at USACE

Essential Elements of Floodplain Management Plans. This is a short instructional video, originally presented as part of the FEMA Region 7 Community Rating System summit in 2021.

Flood Master Series

The Flood Master webinars were created in 2019 with the Missouri State Risk Management Team (Silver Jackets) team. Hosted and created by Brian Rast, the object was to provide an evergreen list of training topics to help floodplain managers, emergency managers, and other flood risk practitioners with prominent flood mitigation topics.

Webinar 1: Hydrology and Hydraulics for the Community Planner/Floodplain Administrator. The first webinar in the Flood Master series focused on basic knowledge to help the practitioners.

Webinar 2: Showing Flood Mitigation in Missouri. The second webinar has two presentations from USACE and FEMA about flood mitigation efforts in Missouri, as of July 2019.

Webinar 3. Tools for Identifying Flood Risk Training. NWS and USGS teamed up in this webinar, showing the useful gages and scientific resources for flood records, flood awareness, and flood warning.

Webinar 4: Flood Risk Management and How To Sustain a Plan. This webinar features a presentation by the state hazard mitigation officer on the hazard mitigation grants and the floodplain administrator describing flood mitigation grant projects. Brian Rast wrapped up the webinar with a quick look at how to form a risk assessment and action plan together to prepare for grant opportunities.

Newsletters by Brian at USACE

The River Crest was a newsletter pilot done with a large levee district association to encourage the more flood risk management work between federal, state, and levee sponsors. This collaboration created 6 issues involving the State Emergency Management Agency and the Missouri Levee & Drainage District Association (MLDDA) in the spring of 2018.

Issue 1-6 The River Crest