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1. What drives community flood risk management? Policy diffusion or free-riding.

   https://doi.org/10.2495/SDP-V15-N1-69-80  

   Noonan, D. S. ( April 2020 , International journal of sustainable development and planning)

   This study explores whether participation in the US Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Com- munity Rating System (CRS), a voluntary community flood risk management program, is a function of policy diffusion or an act of free-riding. Policy diffusion would suggest that, all else being equal, once a community has joined the CRS, neighboring communities will be more likely to follow their lead and participate in the CRS. Free-riding would imply that neighboring communities might choose not to participate in the CRS because they perceive that their community benefits from surrounding communities’ participation. Results indicate that a community’s decision to participate inmore »the CRS is not influenced by the characteristics of or the behavior of their neighbors. The results of this study do, however, show that population density, aggregate housing values, rentership rate, and flat topography are significant predictors of CRS participation.« less
2. Community-scale Flood Risk Management: Effects of a Voluntary National Program on Migration and Development.

   Noonan, D. S. ; Sadiq, A. A. ( March 2019 , Ecological economics)

   Floods remain the most destructive natural hazard worldwide. Understanding and improving flood management at the community scale (i.e., levels larger than the individual or household, but smaller than regions, states, or nations) is important in order to reduce communities’ vulnerability to floods. The growing literature examining flood management at the community scale has not emphasized analysis of the impacts of a flood-risk management policy on migration and development. We contribute new evidence on the impact of the Community Ratings System (CRS), a community scale federal program, on migration and development in the United States. The CRS program was created inmore »1990 to enable communities to voluntarily reduce flood risks, and in return, receive discounted flood insurance premiums. Using panel data (1970–2010), the study estimates fixed-effects regressions with robust standard errors clustered by group. The results indicate that the CRS discourages new construction and the construction of mobile homes or trailers in participating communities. Also, the CRS discourages population growth, but encourages people to stay in CRS participating communities. The study will benefit both academics and practitioners by helping to illuminate the impact of the CRS on migration and development, and improve our understanding of community-scale flood risk management.« less
3. Policy diffusion in community-scale flood risk management.

   Noonan, D. S. ; Richardson, L. E. ; Sadiq, A. A. ( January 2018 , WIT transactions on engineering sciences)

   This study analyzes which communities adopted flood risk management practices during the past 25 years. In particular, we focus on community-scale flood management efforts undertaken voluntarily in towns and counties across the United States. In 1990, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency created the Community Rating System (CRS) to provide incentives to local governments to improve flood resilience. About 1,300 counties and cities voluntarily participate in the CRS, but most eligible communities do not participate. Here, we explore the factors shaping community CRS participation, such as flood risk, socio-economic characteristics, and economic resources, and we assess the competing phenomena ofmore »policy diffusion versus free riding. Previous models of community-scale flood mitigation activities have all considered each community’s decision as independent of one another. Yet one community’s flood management activities might directly or indirectly influence its neighbors’ mitigation efforts. Spillover effects or “contagion” may arise if neighboring communities learn from or seek to emulate or outcompete early adopting neighbors. Conversely, stricter regulation in one community may allow its neighbors to capitalize on looser regulation either by attracting more development or enjoying reduced “downstream” flood risks. This paper presents a conceptual model that allows for multiple forces affecting diffusion, such as copycatting and learning from neighboring communities, free-riding on neighbors’ efforts, and competing with neighbors to provide valuable amenities. We empirically test for these alternative diffusion pathways after controlling for the spatially correlated extant flood risks, building patterns, and demographics. The analysis integrates several large datasets to predict community flood risk management for all cities and counties in the US since 1990. Controls for local flood risk combined with a spatial lag regression model allow separate identification of alternative diffusion pathways. The results indicate strong evidence of copycatting and also suggest possible free-riding.« less
4. Divergent Residential Pathways from Flood-Prone Areas: How Neighborhood Inequalities Are Shaping Urban Climate Adaptation

   https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spab059  

   Elliott, James R ; Loughran, Kevin ; Brown, Phylicia Lee ( September 2021 , Social Problems)

   Abstract Flood risks are rising across the United States, putting the economic and social values of growing numbers of homes at risk. In response, the federal government is funding the purchase and demolition of housing in areas of greatest jeopardy, tacitly promoting residential resettlement as a strategy of climate adaptation, especially in cities. Despite these developments little is known about where people move when they engage in such resettlement or how answers to that question vary by the racial and economic status of their flood-prone neighborhoods. The present study begins to fill that gap. We introduce a new typology formore »classifying environmental resettlement along two socio-spatial dimensions of community attachment: (a) distance moved from one’s flood-prone home; and (b) average distance resettled from similarly relocated neighbors. Next, we analyze data from 1,572 homeowners who accepted government-funded buyouts across 39 neighborhood areas in Harris County, Texas – Houston’s urban core. Results indicate that homeowners from more privileged neighborhoods resettle closer to their flood-prone homes and to one another, thus helping to preserve the social and economic value of their homes; homeowners from less privileged areas end up farther away from both. Implications for understanding social inequities in government-funded urban climate adaptation are discussed.« less
5. Flood risk behaviors of United States riverine metropolitan areas are driven by local hydrology and shaped by race

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016839118  

   Knighton, James ; Hondula, Kelly ; Sharkus, Cielo ; Guzman, Christian ; Elliott, Rebecca ( March 2021 , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Flooding risk results from complex interactions between hydrological hazards (e.g., riverine inundation during periods of heavy rainfall), exposure, vulnerability (e.g., the potential for structural damage or loss of life), and resilience (how well we recover, learn from, and adapt to past floods). Building on recent coupled conceptualizations of these complex interactions, we characterize human–flood interactions (collective memory and risk-enduring attitude) at a more comprehensive scale than has been attempted to date across 50 US metropolitan statistical areas with a sociohydrologic (SH) model calibrated with accessible local data (historical records of annual peak streamflow, flood insurance loss claims, active insurance policymore »records, and population density). A cluster analysis on calibrated SH model parameter sets for metropolitan areas identified two dominant behaviors: 1) “risk-enduring” cities with lower flooding defenses and longer memory of past flood loss events and 2) “risk-averse” cities with higher flooding defenses and reduced memory of past flooding. These divergent behaviors correlated with differences in local stream flashiness indices (i.e., the frequency and rapidity of daily changes in streamflow), maximum dam heights, and the proportion of White to non-White residents in US metropolitan areas. Risk-averse cities tended to exist within regions characterized by flashier streamflow conditions, larger dams, and larger proportions of White residents. Our research supports the development of SH models in urban metropolitan areas and the design of risk management strategies that consider both demographically heterogeneous populations, changing flood defenses, and temporal changes in community risk perceptions and tolerance.

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