Climate Resiliency Policy and Planning for Coastal Communities in the US

Justification of the paper: In the recent years, massive flood damages have impacted coastal communities located in high-risk flood zone, often designed without adequate flood protection. Since 2012 major revisions to the... [ view full abstract ]

Justification of the paper:
In the recent years, massive flood damages have impacted coastal communities located in high-risk flood zone, often designed without adequate flood protection. Since 2012 major revisions to the federal floodplain policy are being introduced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Purpose:
This paper will examine federal flood management policy and regulatory frameworks for planners and policy makers to understand the planning implications of floodplain regulation, and provide recommendation to move towards a sustainable, adaptive, and longer term resiliency for coastal communities using best practices.

Theoretical framework:
88% US counties experienced a flood disaster from 1950–2000. Federal government initiated National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) in 1968 to provide flood insurance for participating communities. However, it failed to provide adequate protection, participation is low even in high risk areas (Burby 2001, Kriesel and Landry 2004), often intensity development on floodplain, and encourage unhealthy reliance on federal aid (Larson and Plasencia 2001). In order to reflect the true flood risk, the revised regulatory structure is gradually removing subsidies and updating flood maps, which will have major implications on planning and decision-making.

Results and conclusions:
This paper will summarize planning implications of revised floodplain regulation for coastal urban areas, and present a few best practices through 4-5 case studies, highlight successfully approaches to increase climate adaptive capacity to make coastal communities resilient, showcase comprehensive floodplain management within the evolving policy framework, and implementation challenges.

Implications for Tipping Points:
Coastal communities must reduce their flooding risk through better landuse planning and other adaptation measures as occurrence and intensity of flooding events is expected to increase due to sea level rise and extreme weather events related to climate change. It becomes critical to adopt resiliency building measures, such as participation in FEMA’s Community Rating System, comprehensive floodplain management, open space preservation, local mitigation and land use measures, and outreach activities.

Key words:
Climate adaptation; coastal area resiliency; National Flood Insurance Program