Browsing by Author "Sun, Pin"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Critical public infrastructure underwater: The flood hazard profile of Florida hospitals
    (Springer Nature, 2023-05) Sun, Pin; Entress, Rebecca; Tyler, Jenna; Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem; Noonan, Douglas; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Hospitals play a critical role during disasters where they provide critical medical care to disaster victims and help the community to respond more effectively and recover quicker. However, hospitals face risks from the natural environment, such as flood risks. Amid the increasing flood risks due to climate change, it is essential to examine hospitals’ risk exposure. Motivated by this, this paper aims to answer four specific questions related to hospitals in Florida: (1) Are hospitals located in flood zones? (2) What is the relationship between hospital network size and flood hazard? (3) To what extent does hospital flood hazard vary by hospital attributes? (4) How do hospitals’ flood hazards differ from other public structures’ flood hazards? By leveraging two micro-level datasets, we found that approximately 12% of Florida hospitals are in flood zones, and that hospitals’ flood hazard is not influenced by hospital network size or hospital attributes. We also found that hospitals are one of the most flood-prone public structures in our sample, raising questions about public infrastructure in flood management. We conclude by offering recommendations for improving hospital resilience to future flood disasters.
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    Distributions of Flood Risk: The Implications of Alternative Measures of Flood Risk
    (World Scientific Publishing, 2022-07) Noonan, Douglas; Richardson, Lilliard; Sun, Pin; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Flooding imposes considerable property risk, and flood maps and flood insurance help prospective and existing property owners assess the potential risk. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) works with local and state officials to produce flood maps. Using these flood maps and demographic attributes, prior research has demonstrated correlations between the percent of a tract identified as disadvantaged and the percent of the tract covered by flood zones. Until recently, FEMA flood maps were the primary assessment tool for flood risk, but First Street Foundation (FSF) has developed its own flood risk tools. This paper compares these alternative flood risk measures as a percent of census tracts in the Southeastern US states and assesses models of the risk measures with demographic, housing, policy and control variables. The main results are first that the FEMA and FSF maps often reveal diverging levels of risk per tract. Second, the demographics correlating with tract-level risk differ markedly for the two risk measures. Third, the results vary considerably by state with more divergence in some states than others, and who is at risk of flooding across the states varies between the FEMA and FSF measures.
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    Is flood mitigation funding distributed equitably? Evidence from coastal states in the southeastern United States
    (Wiley, 2023-06) Tyler, Jenna; Entress, Rebecca M.; Sun, Pin; Noonan, Douglas; Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    The United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides funding to state and local governments as well as tribes and territories (SLTTs) through its Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) grant program to engage in flood risk management efforts. Although all communities are susceptible to flooding, flooding does not impact communities equally. This article contributes to FEMA's goal of addressing equity concerns by examining whether the FMA program is distributed equitably in counties located in eight coastal states in the United States. Using secondary data from OpenFEMA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and parcel-level flood risk data from First Street Foundation from 2016 to 2020, results indicate that socially vulnerable counties are less likely to receive FMA funding, and counties with greater average flood risk are more likely to receive FMA funding. The findings suggest that there is an opportunity for FEMA to improve the FMA program so that funding can be more equitably distributed, such as providing grant writing and application training and support to socially vulnerable communities, educating socially vulnerable communities about the benefits of the FMA program, and extending the application deadline for socially vulnerable communities impacted by flood events.