(Open Access) A review of the community flood risk management literature in the USA: lessons for improving community resilience to floods (2019) | Jenna Tyler

Q: What are the future works in "A review of the community flood risk management literature in the usa: lessons for improving community resilience to floods" ?

To identify knowledge gaps, the authors reviewed the limitations from each study as well as the directions for future research and identified common themes. Consistent with the previous sections, the authors organize knowledge gaps and future research directions according to the six themes previously identified.

Natural Hazards

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-019-03606-3

ORIGINAL PAPER

A review ofthecommunity ood risk management literature

intheUSA: lessons forimproving community resilience

tooods

JennaTyler

· Abdul‑AkeemSadiq

· DouglasS.Noonan

Received: 10 October 2018 / Accepted: 23 March 2019

Abstract

This study systematically reviews the diverse body of research on community ﬂood risk

management in the USA to identify knowledge gaps and develop innovative and practical

lessons to aid ﬂood management decision-makers in their eﬀorts to reduce ﬂood losses.

The authors discovered and reviewed 60 studies that met the selection criteria (e.g., study

is written in English, is empirical, focuses on ﬂood risk management at the community

level in the USA, etc.). Upon reviewing the major ﬁndings from each study, the authors

identiﬁed seven practical lessons that, if implemented, could not only help ﬂood manage-

ment decision-makers better understand communities’ ﬂood risks, but could also reduce

the impacts of ﬂood disasters and improve communities’ resilience to future ﬂood disas-

ters. These seven lessons include: (1) recognizing that acquiring open space and conserv-

ing wetlands are some of the most eﬀective approaches to reducing ﬂood losses; (2) rec-

ognizing that, depending on a community’s ﬂood risks, diﬀerent development patterns are

more eﬀective at reducing ﬂood losses; (3) considering the costs and beneﬁts of participat-

ing in FEMA’s Community Rating System program; (4) engaging community members in

the ﬂood planning and recovery processes; (5) considering socially vulnerable populations

in ﬂood risk management programs; (6) relying on a variety of ﬂoodplain management

tools to delineate ﬂood risk; and (7) ensuring that ﬂood mitigation plans are fully imple-

mented and continually revised.

Keywords Flood risk· Community ﬂood risk management· Community resilience

* Jenna Tyler

jentyler@knights.ucf.edu

Abdul-Akeem Sadiq

abdul-akeem.Sadiq@ucf.edu

Douglas S. Noonan

noonand@iupui.edu

School ofPublic Administration, University ofCentral Florida, Orlando, USA

School ofPublic andEnvironmental Aﬀairs, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis,

Indianapolis, USA

____________________________________________________

This is the author's manuscript of the article published in final edited form as:

Tyler, J., Sadiq, A.-A., & Noonan, D. S. (2019). A review of the community flood risk management literature in the USA:

Lessons for improving community resilience to floods. Natural Hazards, 96(3), 1223–1248.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-019-03606-3

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1 Introduction

Floods have and continue to pose signiﬁcant threats to communities in the USA (Cigler

2017; Consoer and Milman 2017; Sadiq 2017; Sadiq and Noonan 2015a, b). In fact, of all

the natural hazards, ﬂoods are the costliest and result in the most lives lost and property

damage (Cigler 2017; Kick et al. 2011). Recent disasters, including the 2016 Louisiana

ﬂoods as well as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, illustrate the devastating impacts

ﬂoods can have on local communities in the USA (National Weather Service 2017). The

devastation caused by these disasters and others stems from the interaction of the physi-

cal, social, built, and political environments (Brody etal. 2011). Indeed, persistent devel-

opment along the US coastlines and ﬂoodplains coupled with increased precipitation and

rising sea levels has exacerbated communities’ ﬂood risks (Bouwer 2011; Brody et al.

2010). Furthermore, scholars argue that federal ﬂood policies and programs in the USA are

costly, ineﬀective, and have inadvertently encouraged development in high-risk ﬂood zones

(Cigler 2017; Strother 2016). The US National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), for exam-

ple, subsidizes the costs associated with living and doing business in high-risk ﬂood zones

at the expense of taxpayers (Strother 2016).

Amid the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) (2013) prediction of

increases in the frequency and severity of ﬂood disasters engendered by climate change,

there is a potential for increased ﬂood impacts. In light of these predictions, scholars have

argued that a focus on community ﬂood risk management is an eﬀective way to reduce

ﬂood damages in the USA (Pielke and Downton 2000). In this study, the term “commu-

nity” takes on a geographic connotation and refers to a single or collection of states, coun-

ties, and/or neighborhoods. Furthermore, community ﬂood risk management is deﬁned as

actions taken by government and non-government actors, with a purpose to better under-

stand and/or reduce ﬂood risks at the state, county, and/or neighborhood levels (Mees etal.

2016). Examples of community ﬂood risk management activities include, but are not lim-

ited to, adopting structural (e.g., constructing dams, levees, seawalls, etc.) and non-struc-

tural (e.g., regulating land use, revitalizing wetlands, etc.) mitigation measures, drafting

and implementing comprehensive ﬂood mitigation plans, and providing community mem-

bers with information on ﬂood risks (Brody etal. 2010). Mitigation, in this study, refers to

actions taken to reduce ﬂood losses. The authors chose to exclusively focus on community

ﬂood risk management in the USA to ensure that the practical lessons identiﬁed are rele-

vant and applicable to ﬂood management decision-makers in the USA. For example, while

there is an abundance of studies on community ﬂood risk management around the world,

the policies, practices, and approaches that are relevant and eﬀective in other countries may

not be as relevant and eﬀective in the USA. Indeed, diﬀerences in governance structures

and processes, topography, weather patterns, and social vulnerabilities will have implica-

tions for developing eﬀective community ﬂood risk management strategies (Jongman etal.

2018).

Addressing ﬂood risks at the community level is important because ﬂood risks involve

interdependent physical, political, social, and ecological interactions (Brody etal. 2011).

In addition, the community level is amenable to implementing comprehensive ﬂood risk

management initiatives. This partly explains why the number of studies on ﬂood risk man-

agement conducted at the community level in the USA has steadily increased over the past

decade. Given the importance of understanding ﬂood risk management at the community

level and the myriad studies done on this topic, there is a compelling need to synthesize

this large body of research as a means to identify practical lessons to improve communities’

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resilience to future ﬂood disasters. Resilience, in this study, refers to a community’s ability

to absorb the eﬀects of a ﬂood disaster and adapt to reduce the eﬀects of future ﬂood dis-

asters (Cutter etal. 2008). Moreover, scholars (e.g., Morrison etal. 2017) have called for

increased transfer of important ﬁndings on ﬂood risk management from the academic com-

munity to practitioners and policymakers. The present study addresses these needs by sys-

tematically reviewing the diverse body of research on community ﬂood risk management

in the USA. In doing so, it identiﬁes knowledge gaps as well as innovative and practical

lessons that, if implemented, could not only help ﬂood management decision-makers better

understand communities’ ﬂood risks, but could also reduce the impacts of ﬂood disasters

and improve communities’ resilience to future ﬂood disasters.

We organize the remainder of the paper as follows. The next section discusses ﬂood

risk governance in the USA. The third section describes the methodology, including the

search strategy and the selection criteria. The fourth section presents the results and major

ﬁndings, and the ﬁfth section identiﬁes practical lessons for ﬂood management decision-

makers to improve their communities’ resilience to future ﬂood disasters. The sixth section

describes diﬀerent knowledge gaps and identiﬁes directions for future research. The paper

concludes by discussing the implications of our ﬁndings for ﬂood risk management schol-

ars and practitioners and highlighting a few study limitations.

2 Flood risk governance intheUSA

Initial attempts to manage ﬂood risks in the USA date back to the early 1900s, with the fed-

eral government assuming principal responsibility (Galloway 2008). For example, in 1936,

Congress passed the Flood Control Act, which provided the United States Army Corps of

Engineers (USACE) and other federal agencies with the authority to design, develop, and

maintain hundreds of civil engineering projects (e.g., dams, levees, and dikes) to reduce

ﬂood losses (Haddow etal. 2011). Through the 1960s, the federal government maintained

this structural approach to ﬂood management (Galloway 2008). In fact, it was not until

the passage of the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 that the federal government took

a serious interest in engaging in more non-structural ﬂood mitigation measures. A major

component of this act was the establishment of the NFIP. The purpose of the NFIP was and

continues to be to reduce ﬂood risks by requiring participating communities to adhere to

a set of ﬂoodplain management standards and to oﬀer ﬂood insurance to properties with a

signiﬁcant ﬂood risk (Horn and Brown 2018). Following the passage of the National Flood

Insurance Act, states began to assume a major role in ﬂoodplain management as they were

required to adhere to NFIP standards and began advising and supporting their participating

NFIP localities (Mittler etal. 2006).

To incentivize communities to implement ﬂoodplain management activities that go

beyond those required under the NFIP, the Federal Emergency Management Agency

(FEMA) created the Community Rating System (CRS) program. The CRS is a federal,

voluntary program whereby communities that participate in the CRS are eligible to receive

reductions in their ﬂood insurance premiums. If a community decides to participate in the

program, they accumulate credit points as they adopt additional ﬂood mitigation activities.

Examples of creditable activities include, but are not limited to, establishing higher regula-

tory standards, engaging in outreach projects, and constructing dams and levees (see the

CRS Coordinator Manual for a full list of the 19 creditable activities: https ://www.fema.

gov/media -libra ry/asset s/docum ents/8768). As communities accrue credit points, they

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improve their CRS class. CRS classes range from 10 to 1. A class 10 community represents

a community that does not participate in the CRS or that has not accrued enough credit

points to receive any discounts in ﬂood insurance premiums. Conversely, a class 1 com-

munity represents a community that has accrued the maximum amount of credit points,

thus receiving a 45% discount in ﬂood insurance premiums (so long as the community

is located in a Special Flood Hazard Area [SFHA], an area with a one percent chance of

ﬂooding in any given year). Intermediate classes receive discounts in ﬂood insurance pre-

miums in increments of 5%.

Today, ﬂood risk management is primarily a function of local governments (e.g., cities

and counties), especially local emergency and ﬂoodplain managers. Whereas emergency

managers are responsible for coordinating eﬀorts to mitigate, prepare, respond, and recover

from any and all disasters and emergencies, ﬂoodplain managers are responsible for devel-

oping, implementing, and overseeing the community’s ﬂoodplain management program.

This frequently includes “enforcing the community’s ﬂood damage prevention ordinance,

updating ﬂood maps, plans, and policies of the community, and any of the activities related

to administration of the National Flood Insurance Program” (Association of State Flood-

plain Managers 2010, p. 1). Depending on the size and structure of a locality, the emer-

gency and ﬂoodplain manager may be a dual job title and, thus, occupied by the same local

government employee. However, in other communities, the ﬂoodplain manager is a second

job title of a city or county community development director, engineer, building code oﬃ-

cial, or zoning oﬃcer (Tyler 2018; Tyler and Sadiq 2018). Rarely, is a ﬂoodplain manager

the sole function of a local government employee. Rather than using the terms ﬂoodplain

manager or emergency manager to describe the individuals that play a decision-making

role in managing communities’ ﬂood risks, the authors use the term “ﬂood management

decision-makers” to include policymakers and other agencies and groups that are involved

in making decisions to minimize a community’s ﬂood risks.

3 Methods

3.1 Selection criteria

The selection criteria used to identify studies for inclusion are: (1) written in English; (2)

focus on ﬂood risk management at the community level; (3) examine the USA; (4) peer-

reviewed journal article, conference paper, conference proceeding, or dissertation; (5) are

empirical by relying on experience or observations (studies might use primary and/or sec-

ondary data as well as quantitative and/or qualitative data). One of the authors reviewed

the title and abstract of all the papers generated by each keyword search to determine

whether the paper met the criteria for inclusion. If a paper met the criteria for inclusion, the

researcher obtained a full-text version of the article. However, if the paper did not meet the

criteria, this author listed it in the category of exclusions and noted the reason for exclusion

(e.g., not written in English, did not focus on the USA, etc.). If this researcher could not

determine whether the article met the selection criteria by looking at the title and abstract,

a full-text version of the article was obtained for further inquiry in order to make the ﬁnal

eligibility determination.

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3.2 Search strategy

We adopted a three-stage approach to identify relevant studies. Stage one involved search-

ing papers indexed in three academic databases—Google Scholar, Science Direct, and Web

of Science (Bubeck etal. 2012; Morrison etal. 2017; Thompson etal. 2017). The search

of these academic databases began in May of 2017 using the keyword “Community Rating

System” and “FEMA.” We began the search with this keyword because studies examining

community ﬂood risk management in the USA typically reference FEMA’s CRS program.

This keyword search yielded 890 results from Google Scholar, 29 from Science Direct, and

six from Web of Science. We identiﬁed additional studies by searching the three literary

databases using the following keywords “community ﬂood risk management,” “commu-

nity ﬂood policy,” “community ﬂood risk,” and “community ﬂood management.” These

searches generated an additional 202 unique studies. Although we completed the keyword

searches on June 16, 2017, we used Google Scholar Alerts to receive additional studies

that contained any of the keywords until December 31, 2017. These alerts yielded 45 more

studies. In total, we screened and reviewed 1,172 papers and 1,053 papers, respectively.

After the review process, 44 studies matched the selection criteria (see Fig.1).

In stage two, we e-mailed a list containing the initial 44 studies to six experts on com-

munity ﬂood risk management to validate our list and to add any missing eligible studies.

By expert, we mean individuals that have published extensively on community ﬂood risk

management and whose works are well cited. These experts are from diﬀerent disciplines

such as city and regional planning, sociology, urban and regional sciences, and economics.

“Community Rating System”

and “FEMA”