Financial losses due to flooding have increased substantially over the past several decades. Previous research implies that flood losses are rising due to changes in precipitation and increases in exposure. While prior research has explored changes in floodplain exposure at the county level, few efforts have examined patterns across an entire metropolitan area. This thesis examines changes in residential built-environment flood exposure within the current boundaries of the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan statistical area by estimating the number of housing units that are located within the floodplains of the region. Housing unit data at the block level from the 1990-2010 decennial censuses are used to estimate housing unit exposure to floods using a binary dasymetric and proportional allocation method. Due to concerns about flood model accuracy and the fact that regulatory 500-year floodplains have not yet been delineated for all parts of the study area, three different representations of the 100-year (1 percent annual chance) and 500-year (0.2 percent annual chance) floodplain are employed: the generally more conservative floodplains created using the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Hazus-MH software, the generally more extensive floodplains included in the proprietary Flood Hazard Data product from KatRisk LLC and the regulatory floodplains from the NFIP. It was found that residential exposure within both the 100 and 500-year floodplain increased from 1990-2010 throughout the Atlanta region. The NFIP appeared to be marginally effective overall. Regulatory 100-year floodplain development was most likely to be favored over development outside the floodplain where overall development was strong or on the edge of the developing area. Development within the marginal 500-year was favored near the core of the urban area. Results using the KatRisk product reveal both greater overall exposure and a greater increase in exposure within the 100-year floodplain than the regulatory product suggests. Overall, the results argue that heightened flood exposure is, along with changes in precipitation and runoff, an important factor to consider when addressing the impact of the flood hazard.

Severe storm events that include hail and wind often cause widespread contiguous swaths of damage; however, their occurrence is typically documented at individual and disjointed locations. Satellite-derived products, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), can provide a more spatially uniform look at the extent of these events, particularly in rural or remote areas. The utility of incorporating satellite-based products into the damage identification and documentation process was assessed through high-resolution ground surveys, which included digital photographs, to classify three levels of cropland damage for three severe hail/wind events occurring in the Great Plains during the summer of 2014. Pre- and postevent NDVI values at the photograph locations were calculated using surface reflectance values from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and grouped by damage severity level. In general, more severe crop damage displayed a lower NDVI in the postevent imagery compared to undamaged crops. Additionally, the difference in the median NDVI between the pre- and postevent images was statistically significant between the damage categories with similar trends observed across the three summertime events. Thus, satellite-derived products should be promoted as a valuable tool for the initial assessment of damage severity and extent to agricultural crops and should be integrated when possible into the current hazard documentation process as a supplement to the currently available point-based observations of storm damage.