Browsing by Subject "flood risk"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Building underwater: Effects of community-scale flood management on housing development
    (Elsevier, 2022-09) Liu, Xian; Noonan, Douglas; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    The Community Rating System (CRS) program was implemented by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1990 as an optional program to encourage communities to voluntarily engage in flood mitigation initiatives. This paper uses national census tract-level data from 1990 to 2010 to estimate whether CRS participation affects housing development patterns. Our results show that participating in the CRS is associated with reduced rates of new housing construction and mobile homes in flood-prone areas. When we separate flood mitigation activities under the CRS program into information-based and regulation-based activities, we find that regulatory approaches are more effective than informational approaches. These results show a general pattern, nationwide and across decades, of community-scale flood management efforts deterring housing development in flood-prone areas.
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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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    Flood disaster management policy: An analysis of the United States Community Ratings System
    (2014-10) Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem; Noonan, Douglas S.
    In 1990 the US Federal Emergency Management Agency created the Community Ratings System (CRS) to engage local governments to enhance community flood resilience. The CRS encourages community flood risk management activities by discounting flood insurance premiums commensurate with the level of flood management measures implemented. Using a national sample of communities, this study empirically identifies factors motivating both communities’ decision to participate and intensity of participation in the CRS. The results indicate that local capacity, flood risk factors, socio-economic characteristics, and political economy factors are significant predictors of CRS participation. Further, factors predicting participation in the CRS differ from factors predicting CRS scores.
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    A review of the community flood risk management literature in the USA: lessons for improving community resilience to floods
    (Springer, 2019) Tyler, Jenna; Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem; Noonan, Douglas S.; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    This study systematically reviews the diverse body of research on community flood risk management in the USA to identify knowledge gaps and develop innovative and practical lessons to aid flood management decision-makers in their efforts to reduce flood losses. The authors discovered and reviewed 60 studies that met the selection criteria (e.g., study is written in English, is empirical, focuses on flood risk management at the community level in the USA, etc.). Upon reviewing the major findings from each study, the authors identified seven practical lessons that, if implemented, could not only help flood management decision-makers better understand communities’ flood risks, but could also reduce the impacts of flood disasters and improve communities’ resilience to future flood disasters. These seven lessons include: (1) recognizing that acquiring open space and conserving wetlands are some of the most effective approaches to reducing flood losses; (2) recognizing that, depending on a community’s flood risks, different development patterns are more effective at reducing flood losses; (3) considering the costs and benefits of participating in FEMA’s Community Rating System program; (4) engaging community members in the flood planning and recovery processes; (5) considering socially vulnerable populations in flood risk management programs; (6) relying on a variety of floodplain management tools to delineate flood risk; and (7) ensuring that flood mitigation plans are fully implemented and continually revised.