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Every year, floods cause substantial economic losses worldwide with devastating impacts on buildings and physical infrastructures throughout communities. Techniques are available to mitigate flood damage and subsequent losses, but the ability to weigh such strategies with respect to their benefits from a community resilience perspective is limited in the literature. Investing in flood mitigation is critical for communities to protect the physical and socioeconomic systems that depend on them. While there are multiple mitigation options to implement at the building level, this paper focuses on determining the optimal flood mitigation strategy for buildings to minimize flood losses within a community. In this research, a mixed integer linear programming model is proposed for studying the effects and trade-offs associated with pre-event short-term and long-term mitigation strategies to minimize the expected economic losses associated with floods. The capabilities of the proposed model are illustrated for Lumberton, North Carolina (NC), a small, socially diverse inland community on the Lumber River. The mathematically optimal building-level flood mitigation plan is provided based on the available budget, which can significantly minimize the total expected direct economic loss of the community. The results reveal important correlations among investment quantity, building-level short- and long-term mitigation measures, flood depths of various locations, and buildings’ structure. Additionally, this study shows the trade-offs between short- and long-term mitigation measures based on available budget by providing decision support to building owners regarding mitigation measures for their buildings.
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Estimating the Socioeconomic Impacts of Flooding on Regional Economies With a Computable General Equilibrium Model
Abstract The growing number of flood events in urban areas is causing far‐reaching economic losses and social disruptions. To implement suitable flood risk management strategies and measures for flood prevention and mitigation, it is paramount to adequately assess economy‐wide losses associated with potential flood events. The assessment of potential flood damage in the USA relies significantly on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Hazus Flood Model. A primary requirement to reduce uncertainty is to empirically gather user input data. Consequently, there is a need to integrate publicly accessible business data for accurate evaluation of losses in business activities. We present a novel approach for estimating both the direct losses in business activities during a flood and the total economy‐wide impact that arise from these disruptions. First, we integrate the FEMA Hazus Flood Model with Reference Solutions business‐level data to estimate the reduction in business activities (i.e., direct losses) following a 100‐year flood event in New Hanover County, North Carolina. Second, we estimate the broader economy‐wide impact these business activity losses have on total industry output, employment, value‐added and household income using a regional computational general equilibrium model. The advantage of our approach is the easy replicability of the business loss estimation process for US cities and regions of interest, which, when used in a follow‐up economic impact study, leads to estimating the total economy‐wide losses in economic activities. Policy makers relying solely on direct physical and economic damages would, by ignoring indirect losses, underestimate the benefits of investing in flood mitigation and protection.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2033607
- PAR ID:
- 10465618
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Water Resources Research
- Volume:
- 59
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 0043-1397
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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