Flood interventions for socially equitable community resilience

Abstract

Flood hazard intensity and frequency are increasing due to climate change and diminish the resiliency of the built environment. Although funds for hazard interventions are available through programs such as the National Flood Insurance Program, Hazard Mitigation Assistance, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, these resources are often limited to specific flood zones and agencies have yet to fully consider social equity in their allocation. This study utilizes a community model and performs an analysis to evaluate community resilience through a social equity lens for flood intervention practices. As a case study, the computational platform IN CORE was utilized to perform a hazard-damage-consequence model for Lumberton, NC, a community damaged by two consecutive flood events (Hurricanes Matthew and Florence). A numerical model for Lumberton was developed using an existing suite of 15 building archetypes to populate the building inventory, which consists of 20,000 structures, and then households are synthetically populated from the census block level to representatively replicate the Lumberton community. An analysis quantifies the social equity of property acquisitions. To assess the distributional equity of property acquisition scenarios, population dislocation projections and resilience metrics are employed.