Browsing by Subject "Flood mitigation"

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Barriers for Municipalities to Federal Funding for Flood Mitigation
    (2020-05) Reilly, Kelly
    In North Carolina, flooding is a significant and costly problem for many counties. Efforts to mitigate flooding damage or incidence take a number of forms, including property buyouts and traditional and natural infrastructure projects, many of which can be costly for counties. There are a number of federal programs designed to fund the range of mitigative measures, dependent on the type of project or assessment of risk for the municipality. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) wants to know the answer to a key policy question related to flood mitigation: what are the barriers, if any, limiting the utilization by local governments in North Carolina of federally available funds for mitigative projects aimed at preventing flood damage? If so, how should EDF prioritize their partnerships, planning, and resources in providing solutions to lessen these barriers?
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Economics Valuation of Flood Mitigation Services Provided by Tropical Forests in Malaysia
    (2010-04-30T17:58:37Z) Tan-Soo, Jie-Sheng
    Forests are provider of many ecosystem services which benefits a wide group of people. But the lack of markets to capture payments for these services meant that forest owners chose to convert their assets to provide marketable goods for a smaller group. Payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes was developed specifically to ensure that forest owners can receive payments in return for providing ecosystem services. One such service provided by forests is flood mitigation and valuing this service has always been challenging due to the lack of suitable data. This study has the unique opportunity to fill in this knowledge gap by using a 20-year flood data from Malaysia. The purpose of this study is thus to measure the economic benefits derived from flood mitigation services by increasing forest cover by 10%. The conceptual approach is the Freeman three-stage framework and the main techniques employed are regression analysis and benefits transfer. In the first stage, it was found that the 10% increase in forest cover leads to a reduction in number of days flooded by 1.552 days for every flood in West Coast Malaysia. In the second stage, we found that one lesser day of flood decreases the number of evacuees by about 10.4% and number of deaths by about 3.62%. These two results are combined to show that a 10% increase in forest cover reduces the number of evacuees and deaths by 16.1% and 5.61% respectively. Valuation of these benefits is undertaken in the third stage using benefits transfer where it was calculated that the flood mitigation benefits provided by 10% increase forest cover is about 3.5 million ringgit over 20 years on West Coast Malaysia. This figure not only provide a good starting point for implementing a PES scheme but is also useful for conducting a cost-benefit analysis of different flood mitigation policies. However, it should be highlighted that this value is an understatement of the actual benefits as there are many other prominent averted damages not included.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemOpen Access
    Nature-based Urban Flood Resilience: a policy analysis of natural flood mitigation measures in sea level rise planning in New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco
    (2017-08-18) Myers, Michelle
    Sea level rise (SLR) and severe weather events have already exposed the vulnerability of coastal cities to flood events. Regional planning bodies are developing comprehensive plans to build resiliency utilizing both hardened and natural flood mitigation measures. While the plans use living shorelines and wetland restoration to buffer coastal regions, land managers have uncertainty to the level of protection these measures provide and a bias to maintain hardened shorelines and levee infrastructure. In addition, there are barriers to implementation of SLR adaptation plans in permitting, funding and land tenure. Research methods for the project include a literature review of resiliency planning documents and related articles, as well as interviews with resiliency planning staff in the case study areas of New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Policy recommendations are made that include: standardizing economic valuation and performance matrices of natural flood barriers, simplifying agency approvals, developing managed retreat practices and project migration zones, and increasing federal funding while identifying local resources for adaptation projects.