Collaborative Research: Urban Flooding and Residential Adaptation

Of all natural hazards, flooding exerts the greatest economic and social impacts on the US population, and its impacts have increased over time. In response, the US government is funding the voluntary acquisition of homes in floodplains across the country, removing people and homes from the nation’s most flood-prone areas. This project advances scientific understanding of managed retreat from American floodplains, including their impacts on different types of communities.

Results provide decisionmakers, floodplain managers, and community leaders with state-of-the-art knowledge needed to make flood adaption more socially and administratively successful in the future.

This project investigates tens of thousands of households nationwide who have exited, stayed, and entered neighborhoods targeted by the federal government’s policy of managed retreat. The project leverages novel sources of data to follow the residential trajectories of participants and non-participants to and from neighborhoods targeted for managed retreat over time.

Sources will include individual-level data on residential histories, address-level data on future flood risks, and longitudinal household survey and interview data. The study also accounts for the different types of communities in which households are embedded. Results contribute to understanding of residential mobility as a form of flood adaptation and how managed retreat unfolds differently for different populations facing increasing flood risks.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.