Browsing by Subject "Flood Risk"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Assessing and Communicating Flood Risk in Currituck County, North Carolina
    (2018-04-26) Halstead, Amber
    Flooding is a major threat to communities along the North Carolina coast. Currituck County specifically has seen several major flood events in the last few years. Currently, almost 60% of the county is in a flood zone, a designation that helps mitigate flood risks by ensuring property owners purchase flood insurance. Currently in the process of being adopted, new federal flood maps for the county will remove 64% of the structures from the special flood hazard area. County officials are concerned that these new maps will encourage residents to drop their flood insurance, leaving them more vulnerable to devastating flood events. This project utilized online surveys and participatory mapping meetings to assess the perception of flood risk in the county as well as concerns about flooding and flood insurance. I then used the information gathered to construct a flood communication plan for Currituck County that would help them to better communicate the true risk of flooding to residents.
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    Building Social Equity into Floodplain Buyouts
    (2021-04-30) Lipuma, Sarah
    Increasingly frequent flood events have generated greater attention to voluntary floodplain buyouts, a tool to mitigate flood hazards by permanently moving people and properties out of harm’s way. While buyouts hold the promise of reducing flood risk by allowing the land to be used to store stormwater, they can also repeat inequitable practices of the past that have displaced vulnerable communities. Through a literature review, this study discusses the knowledge to date at the nexus between flood risk, social equity, and buyouts. The study uses geospatial tools to identify possible parcels for buyouts in a North Carolina town by focusing on the level of flood risk and proximity to natural areas. The resulting buyout scenarios are compared using a social vulnerability index and physical risk factors. The study concludes with recommendations to land use planners and floodplain managers at the state level for buyout decision-making. Incorporating social vulnerability information into buyout criteria will be valuable to administrators of buyout programs to identify the most at-risk populations, prioritize equity, and direct government funding to buyouts that benefit the entire community.
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    Coastal Water Table Mapping: Incorporating Groundwater Data into Flood Inundation Forecasts
    (2016-04-23) Moss, Alaurah
    Groundwater levels in surficial coastal aquifers are dynamic and responsive to climactic conditions. Long- and short-time scale sea level changes can induce upward fluctuations in the coastal water table to the point that it can break out of the land surface, resulting in groundwater inundation. Sea-level driven groundwater inundation can compound with rainfall and coastal tidal flooding and increase flood risk to low-lying areas. In order to fully evaluate coastal flood risk, all of the hydrological processes affected by sea level must be accounted for, including groundwater inundation driven by tidal fluctuations and water table rise. The present work evaluates the importance of groundwater inundation influenced by SLR, and identifies potential hotspots (i.e. areas that have especially shallow water-tables) by analyzing and modeling a coastal water table. This project also demonstrates how this information can be incorporated into flood inundation forecasts under different SLR scenarios. The Hampton Roads region of southeast Virginia was selected as a case study to develop the groundwater inundation model, and reveal how the spatial extent and depth of flooded land increases significantly by including groundwater data.