The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Community Rating System; Evaluating its functionality as a robust climate change adaptation strategy
Abstract
Climate impacts are increasing in frequency and severity. As a result there is growing
demand in communities around the world for immediately actionable and scalable climate
change adaptation solutions. Unfortunately, there are few examples of active, and
successful, adaptation projects at the present time. One promising option in the United
States is the extension and modification of existing programs such as the Community
Rating System (CRS), a federal flood management program. Supplementing FEMA’s National
Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), the CRS incentivizes communities to adopt advanced
flood management practices in order to reduce community vulnerability. Informed by
a review of pertinent literature, interviews, and public document analysis, this study
examines whether the CRS can be used as a legitimate adaptation tool today, and in
the future. Analysis suggests that the CRS, as currently structured, does not satisfy
adaptation’s central definitions and goals. However, the program is capable of being
used to broadly build community adaptive capacity. With some modifications (increased
incorporation of climate science projections and greater attention to vulnerable populations),
the CRS should successfully function as adaptation solution, and is a promising tool
to grow large-scale climate resilience.
Type
Master's projectPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8492Citation
Ronneberg, Kristina (2014). The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Community Rating System; Evaluating its
functionality as a robust climate change adaptation strategy. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8492.Collections
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