Mona Hemmati

Bio: Mona Hemmati is an academic researcher from Colorado State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Urbanization & Flood risk assessment. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 6 publications receiving 27 citations. Previous affiliations of Mona Hemmati include Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory.

The Role of Urban Growth in Resilience of Communities Under Flood Risk

Abstract: Flood risk to urban communities is increasing significantly as a result of the integrated effects of climate change and socioeconomic development. The latter effect is one of the main drivers of rising flood risk has received less attention in comparison to climate change. Economic development and population growth are major causes of urban expansion in flood-prone areas, and a comprehensive understanding of the impact of urban growth on flood risk is an essential ingredient of effective flood risk management. At the same time, planning for community resilience has become a national and worldwide imperative in recent years. Enhancements to community resilience require well-integrated and enormous long-term public and private investments. Accordingly, comprehensive urban growth plans should take rising flood risk into account to ensure future resilient communities through careful collaboration between engineers, geologists, socialists, economists, and urban planners within the framework of life-cycle analysis. This paper highlights the importance of including urban growth in accurate future flood risk assessment and how planning for future urbanization should include measurement science-based strategies in developing policies to achieve more resilient communities.

Unraveling the complexity of human behavior and urbanization on community vulnerability to floods.

Abstract: Floods are among the costliest natural hazards and their consequences are expected to increase further in the future due to urbanization in flood-prone areas. It is essential that policymakers understand the factors governing the dynamics of urbanization to adopt proper disaster risk reduction techniques. Peoples' relocation preferences and their perception of flood risk (collectively called human behavior) are among the most important factors that influence urbanization in flood-prone areas. Current studies focusing on flood risk assessment do not consider the effect of human behavior on urbanization and how it may change the nature of the risk. Moreover, flood mitigation policies are implemented without considering the role of human behavior and how the community will cope with measures such as buyout, land acquisition, and relocation that are often adopted to minimize development in flood-prone regions. Therefore, such policies may either be resisted by the community or result in severe socioeconomic consequences. In this study, we present a new Agent-Based Model (ABM) to investigate the complex interaction between human behavior and urbanization and its role in creating future communities vulnerable to flood events. We identify critical factors in the decisions of households to locate or relocate and adopt policies compatible with human behavior. The results show that when people are informed about the flood risk and proper incentives are provided, the demand for housing within 500-year floodplain may be reduced as much as 15% by 2040 for the case study considered. On the contrary, if people are not informed of the risk, 29% of the housing choices will reside in floodplains. The analyses also demonstrate that neighborhood quality-influenced by accessibility to highways, education facilities, the city center, water bodies, and green spaces, respectively-is the most influential factor in peoples' decisions on where to locate. These results provide new insights that may be used to assist city planners and stakeholders in examining tradeoffs between costs and benefits of future land development in achieving sustainable and resilient cities.

A Framework for Collapse Vulnerability Assessment of Steel Beams Subjected to Increasing Loads and Nonuniform Longitudinal Temperature

Abstract: Steel beams are susceptible to large deformation and capacity reduction when subjected to elevated temperatures. Determination of collapse loads for structural steel members under fire is c...

Enhanced urban adaptation efforts needed to counter rising extreme rainfall risks

Abstract: Record-breaking rainfall events are occurring more frequently in a warming climate. Impacts on lives and livelihoods disproportionately occur in traditionally underserved communities, particularly in urban areas. To influence policy and behavioral change at the community level, climate services must be developed specific to extreme rainfall events and subsequent floods in urban environments.

The Value of Urban Flood Modeling

Abstract: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Numbers SES 1444755 and 1934933. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors draw on discussions held during a virtual workshop of the National Science Foundation funded Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network on April 2, 2020. This workshop was attended by UREx researchers and practitioners representing 10 United States and Latin American cities.

Minimal Building Flood Fragility and Loss Function Portfolio for Resilience Analysis at the Community Level

Abstract: Current flood vulnerability analyses rely on deterministic methods (e.g., stage–damage functions) to quantify resulting damage and losses to the built environment. While such approaches have been used extensively by communities, they do not enable the propagation of uncertainty into a risk- or resilience-informed decision process. In this paper, a method that allows the development of building fragility and building loss functions is articulated and applied to develop an archetype portfolio that can be used to model buildings in a typical community. The typical single-variable flood vulnerability function, normally based on flood depth, is extended to a multi-variate flood vulnerability function, which is a function of both flood depth and flood duration, thereby creating fragility surfaces. The portfolio presented herein consists of 15 building archetypes that can serve to populate a community-level model to predict damage and resulting functionality from a scenario flood event. The prediction of damage and functionality of buildings within a community is the first step in developing risk-informed mitigation decisions to improve community resilience.