This stream of work has been focused on flood/drought mitigation and adaptation strategies with the research goal of assisting localities in developing effective flood mitigation programs/strategies. The first two projects I conducted for FEMA and NSF (combined) examined the drivers of household-level decision-making around accepting or rejecting state mitigation offers, primarily after disaster events, including riverine and coastal flooding throughout the United States. Working in over twenty localities from Savannah to Santa Cruz, our team was able to produce research that was called upon for rule-making by the U.S. Congress. Based upon modeling and in-depth interviews with households and every level of government; we provided policy possibilities drawing upon differentiating subpopulations of flooded households, and the solid and positive relationship between using community-based mitigation strategies rather than top-down. It is not an easy transition for a large agency, but one which has gained traction.

In two studies for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Science Foundation, my team identified that a ‘blanket’ flood insurance reform act moving property owners who denied offers of mitigation to actuarial insurance rates was not sound because our modeling demonstrated low to middle-income households as being 12X and 4X more likely to accept offers if they could make it work. In other words, the same policy would have impacted these groups even though it is primarily high-income (second homeowners many times) who used the National Flood Insurance Program to continue to remodel their properties after meteorological events (e.g., flooding). These findings are of practical importance for localities dealing with the repetitive loss of properties from flooding.