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1. Recognizing flood exposure inequities across flood frequencies

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2023.100371  

   Selsor, Haley; Bledsoe, Brian P.; Lammers, Roderick (June 2023, Anthropocene)

   Urban flooding is a growing threat due to land use and climate change. Vulnerable populations tend to have greater exposure to flooding as a result of historical societal and institutional processes. Most flood vulnerability studies focus on a single large flood, neglecting the impact of small, frequent floods. Therefore, there is a need to investigate inequitable flood exposure across a range of event magnitudes and frequencies. To explore this question, we develop a novel score of inequitable flood risk by defining risk as a function of frequency, exposure, and vulnerability. This analysis combines high-resolution, parcel-scale compounded fluvial and pluvial flood data with census data at the census block group scale. We focus on six census tracts within Athens-Clarke County, Georgia that are highly developed with diverse populations. We define vulnerable populations as non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and households under the poverty level and use dasymetric mapping techniques to calculate the over-representation of these populations in flood zones. Inequitable risks at each census tract (approximately neighborhood scale) were estimated for multiple (e.g., 5-, 10-, 20-, 50-, and 100-year) flood return periods. Results show that the relatively greatest flood risk inequities occur for the 10-year flood and not at the largest event. We also found that the size of inequity is dynamic, depending on the flood magnitude. Therefore, addressing a range of events including smaller, more frequent floods can increase equity and reveal opportunities that may be missed if only one event is considered. 

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2. The complexities of urban flood response: Flood frequency analyses for the Charlotte metropolitan region: THE COMPLEXITIES OF URBAN FLOOD RESPONSE

   https://doi.org/10.1002/2016WR019997  

   Zhou, Zhengzheng; Smith, James A.; Yang, Long; Baeck, Mary Lynn; Chaney, Molly; Ten Veldhuis, Marie-Claire; Deng, Huiping; Liu, Shuguang (August 2017, Water Resources Research)
3. Framing the Problem of Flood Risk and Flood Management in Metropolitan Los Angeles

   https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0013.1  

   Ulibarri, Nicola; Valencia-Uribe, Claudia; Sanders, Brett F.; Schubert, Jochen; Matthew, Richard; Forman, Fonna; Allaire, Maura; Brady, David (January 2023, Weather, Climate, and Society)

   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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4. Heading for the Hills? Effects of Community Flood Management on Local Adaptation to Flood Risks: Management and Adaptation to Flood Risks

   https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12340  

   Noonan, Douglas S.; Liu, Xian (January 2019, Southern Economic Journal)

   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 article uses national census tract-level data from 1980 to 2010 to estimate whether CRS participation and flood risk affect a community's local patterns of population change. We employ an instrumental-variables strategy to address the potential endogeneity of CRS participation, based on community-scale demographic factors that predict when a tract’s host community joins the CRS. The results find significant effects of the CRS program and flood risk on population change. Taken together, the findings point to greater propensity for community-scale flood management in areas with more newcomers and programs such as CRS stabilizing population, though not especially in flood- prone areas. We observe the CRS neither displacing population toward lower-risk areas nor attracting more people to flood-prone areas. 

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5. Flood Monitoring and Mitigation Strategies for Flood-Prone Urban Areas

   https://doi.org/10.1109/SIEDS49339.2020.9106583  

   Finley, Pat; Gatti, Grayson; Goodall, Jonathan; Nelson, Mac; Nicholson, Kiri; Shah, Kruti (April 2020, 2020 Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS))