Socioeconomic implications of national flood insurance policy reform and flood insurance rate map revisions

Frazier, Tim; Boyden, E; Wood, Erik

doi:10.1007/s11069-020-03990-1

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…As flooding continues to occur, maintaining accurate FIRMs and risk-based pricing will continue to be an important task for the National Flood Insurance Program. Balancing flood hazard with equity and fairness in preparation, exposure, and recovery are now important conversations for NFIP as the risks and costs of floods increase in the United States (Elliott, 2019(Elliott, , 2021Frazier et al, 2020;Nance, 2015;Pralle, 2019;Smiley, 2020). Continuing work that investigates and understands why FIRMS flood zones are altered and by whom will be an important contribution that informs these broader conversations in the National Flood Insurance Program.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a substantial literature that has studied various facets of the NFIP, only a few of which include public policy reforms and affordability (Kousky & Kunreuther, 2014; Nance, 2015; Shively, 2017; Strother, 2018), the distributional effects of NFIP payments (Ben‐Shahar & Logue, 2016; Bin et al, 2012, 2017; Holladay & Schwartz, 2010; McGuire et al, 2015), and the uptake rates of flood insurance policies (Kousky et al, 2018). Among research specific to FIRMs, themes have included the exposure, vulnerability, and environmental justice of flood hazard depicted on FIRMs (Chakraborty et al, 2014; Collins et al, 2018; Collins, 2010; Frazier et al, 2020; Maantay & Maroko, 2009; Montgomery & Chakraborty, 2015; Qiang et al, 2017) and the impact on housing prices of being located in the SFHA (Bin & Landry, 2013; Shr & Zipp, 2019). FIRMs have also been criticized for a number of shortcomings, such as failing to incorporate predictions of how climate change will alter flood hydrology and underrepresenting the number of properties at risk of inundation from large and/or frequent flood events (Pralle, 2019; Wing et al, 2017, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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To appeal and amend: Changes to recently updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps

Lea

Pralle

2021

Risk Hazard & Crisis Pub Pol

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Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) are produced for the National Flood Insurance Program to depict and manage flood hazard in the United States. While past research has portrayed FIRMs as static maps, property residents and community representatives can propose changes to flood zones on FIRMs. These changes add and remove buildings from flood zones on FIRMs, which raises an important question: are there discernable trends or patterns in these alterations to FIRMs? We use Geographic Information Systems FIRM layers and building footprints to quantify the number of buildings moved in and out of the Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) for recently updated FIRMs. Our analysis of building additions and removals from SFHAs at county and census tract scales shows there has been a net change of over 20,000 buildings removed from these SFHAs between preliminary and present FIRM iterations. We also find that SFHAs are more frequently altered in places where median home values are higher, buildings are newer, and percentage of white populations are higher. These findings suggest changes to flood zones on FIRMs occur more often where people have greater socioeconomic means, raising questions of equity for future FIRM appeals and revisions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

To appeal and amend: Changes to recently updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps

Lea

Pralle

2021

Risk Hazard & Crisis Pub Pol

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“…Past research argued that properties located in flood-prone areas can degrade in value, lowering the total community housing prices and even causing population displacement. In addition, the ability to precisely estimate populations potentially affected by flood hazard, particularly with regard to vulnerable subgroups, can improve community resilience, flood hazard planning, and city inclusiveness [ 55 , 56 ]. Last but not least, high-quality drainage infrastructure should be installed to prepare for regular urban flooding.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A GIS-Based Approach for Flood Risk Zoning by Combining Social Vulnerability and Flood Susceptibility: A Case Study of Nanjing, China

Chen

Liu

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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The identification of vulnerable people and places to flood is crucial for effective disaster risk management. Here, we combine flood hazard and social vulnerability index to capture the potential risk of flood. In this paper, Nanjing was taken as the case study to explore the spatial pattern of social vulnerability towards flood at the community scale by developing an index system. Based on the flood risk results of ArcSWAT, the risk of flood disaster in Nanjing was evaluated. The results show the following. (1) Social vulnerability exhibits a central–peripheral pattern in general, which means that the social vulnerability degree is high in the central city and decreases gradually to the suburbs. (2) The susceptibility to flood disaster has a similar circle-layer pattern that is the highest in the urban centre, lower in the exurban areas, and the lowest in the suburb areas. (3) By using the GIS-based zoning approach, communities are classified into four types by comprehensively considering their flood susceptibility and social vulnerability. The spatial pattern is explained, and policy recommendation for reducing flood risk is provided for each type of community. The research has important reference significance for identifying the spatial pattern of social vulnerability to flood and then formulating targeted adaptation countermeasures.

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“…Flood probability interpolation tools can help address these issues by reducing the bias of spatially resolved flood probability maps. Refined flood probability maps can be useful to improve decisions, for example about where and how to build or whether to elevate a house, whether and how to change local zoning, and how to set fair flood insurance rates [9,[32][33][34][35]. shows the FEMA floodplains, derived from FEMA flood surface elevation data for the 1% and 0.2% annual chance (1 in 100-year and 1 in 500-year) floods.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The FLOod Probability Interpolation Tool (FLOPIT): A Simple Tool to Improve Spatial Flood Probability Quantification and Communication

Zarekarizi

Roop-Eckart

Sharma

et al. 2021

Water

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Understanding flood probabilities is essential to making sound decisions about flood-risk management. Many people rely on flood probability maps to inform decisions about purchasing flood insurance, buying or selling real-estate, flood-proofing a house, or managing floodplain development. Current flood probability maps typically use flood zones (for example the 1 in 100 or 1 in 500-year flood zones) to communicate flooding probabilities. However, this choice of communication format can miss important details and lead to biased risk assessments. Here we develop, test, and demonstrate the FLOod Probability Interpolation Tool (FLOPIT). FLOPIT interpolates flood probabilities between water surface elevation to produce continuous flood-probability maps. FLOPIT uses water surface elevation inundation maps for at least two return periods and creates Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP) as well as inundation maps for new return levels. Potential advantages of FLOPIT include being open-source, relatively easy to implement, capable of creating inundation maps from agencies other than FEMA, and applicable to locations where FEMA published flood inundation maps but not flood probability. Using publicly available data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood risk databases as well as state and national datasets, we produce continuous flood-probability maps at three example locations in the United States: Houston (TX), Muncy (PA), and Selinsgrove (PA). We find that the discrete flood zones generally communicate substantially lower flood probabilities than the continuous estimates.

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Socioeconomic implications of national flood insurance policy reform and flood insurance rate map revisions

Cited by 14 publications

References 32 publications

To appeal and amend: Changes to recently updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps

To appeal and amend: Changes to recently updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps

A GIS-Based Approach for Flood Risk Zoning by Combining Social Vulnerability and Flood Susceptibility: A Case Study of Nanjing, China

The FLOod Probability Interpolation Tool (FLOPIT): A Simple Tool to Improve Spatial Flood Probability Quantification and Communication

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