Flood disaster management policy: an analysis of the United States Community Ratings System

Abstract

In 1990 the US Federal Emergency Management Agency created the Community Ratings System (CRS) to engage local governments to enhance community flood resilience. The CRS encourages community flood risk management activities by discounting flood insurance premiums commensurate with the level of flood management measures implemented. Using a national sample of communities, this study empirically identifies factors motivating both communities’ decision to participate and intensity of participation in the CRS. The results indicate that local capacity, flood risk factors, socio-economic characteristics, and political economy factors are significant predictors of CRS participation. Further, factors predicting participation in the CRS differ from factors predicting CRS scores.

Keywords:

• disaster management
• community resilience
• flood insurance
• flood risk

Notes

1. As an important aside, given that flood risk (measured at the 1 km × 1 km grid cell scale) often varies widely within a community, it is interesting to note that the ‘max-mean’ function performed most consistently in the model runs. The grid cell risks can be aggregated to a block-group level (e.g., mean risk, maximum risk) and those neighborhood level risk indicators can be aggregated up to a county level. Taking the highest value among neighborhood risk levels, where neighborhood risk is defined as the average risk in that neighborhood, proved a strong fit in these models.