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Abstract This paper develops the concept of flood problem framing to understand decision-makers’ priorities in flood risk management in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region in California (LA Metro). Problem frames shape an individual’s preferences for particular management strategies and their future behaviors. While flooding is a complex, multifaceted problem, with multiple causes and multiple impacts, a decision-maker is most likely to manage only those dimensions of flooding about which they are aware or concerned. To evaluate flood decision-makers’ primary concerns related to flood exposure, vulnerability, and management in the LA Metro, we draw on focus groups with flood control districts, city planners, nonprofit organizations, and other flood-related decision-makers. We identify numerous concerns, including concerns about specific types of floods (e.g., fluvial vs pluvial) and impacts to diverse infrastructure and communities. Our analyses demonstrate that flood concerns aggregate into three problem frames: one concerned with large fluvial floods exacerbated by climate change and their housing, economic, and infrastructure impacts; one concerned with pluvial nuisance flooding, pollution, and historic underinvestment in communities; and one concerned with coastal and fluvial flooding’s ecosystem impacts. While each individual typically articulated concerns that overlapped with only one problem frame, each problem frame was discussed by numerous organization types, suggesting low barriers to cross-organizational coordination in flood planning and response. This paper also advances our understanding of flood risk perception in a region that does not face frequent large floods. Significance StatementThis paper investigates the primary concerns that planners, flood managers, and other decision-makers have about flooding in Southern California. This is important because the way that decision-makers understand flooding shapes the way that they will plan for and respond to flood events. We find that some decision-makers are primarily concerned with large floods affecting large swaths of infrastructure and housing; others are concerned with frequent, small floods that mobilize pollution in low-income areas; and others are concerned with protecting coastal ecosystems during sea level rise. Our results also highlight key priorities for research and practice, including the need for flexible and accessible flood data and education about how to evacuate.
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Governing the gaps in water governance and land-use planning in a megacity: The example of hydrological risk in Mexico City
Megacities are socio-ecological systems (SES) that encompass complex interactions between residents, institutions, and natural resource management. These interactions are exacerbated by climate change as resources such as water become scarce or hazardous through drought and flooding. In order to develop pathways for improved sustainability, the disparate factors that create vulnerable conditions and outcomes must be visible to decision-makers. Nevertheless, for such decision-makers to manage vulnerability effectively, they need to define the salient boundaries of the urban SES, and the relevant biophysical, technological, and socio-institutional attributes that play critical roles in vulnerability dynamics. Here we explore the problem of hydrological risk in Mexico City, where vulnerabilities to flooding and water scarcity are interconnected temporally and spatially, yet the formal and informal institutions and actors involved in the production and management of vulnerability are divided into two discrete problem domains: land-use planning and water resource management. We analyze interviews with city officials working in both domains to understand their different perspectives on the dynamics of socio-hydrological risk, including flooding and water scarcity. We find governance gaps within land-use planning and water management that lead to hydro-social risk, stemming from a failure to address informal institutions that exacerbate vulnerability to flooding and water scarcity. Mandates in both sectors are overlapping and confusing, while socio-hydrological risk is externalized to the informal domain, making it ungoverned. Integrated water management approaches that recognize and incorporate informality are needed to reduce vulnerability to water scarcity and flooding.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1657773
- PAR ID:
- 10086373
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Cities
- Volume:
- 83
- ISSN:
- 1873-6084
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 61-70
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.06.009
