The Rising Costs of Floods: Examining the Impact of Planning and Development Decisions on Property Damage in Florida

Extreme climate events have been increasing over much of the world, and dynamical models predict further increases in response to enhanced greenhouse forcing. We examine the ability of a high-resolution nested climate model, RegCM3, to capture the statistics of dailyscale temperature and precipitation events over the conterminous United States, using observational and reanalysis data for comparison. Our analyses reveal that RegCM3 captures the pattern of mean, interannual variability, and trend in the tails of the daily temperature and precipitation distributions. However, consistent biases do exist, including wet biases in the topographically-complex regions of the western United States and hot biases in the southern and central United States. The biases in heavy precipitation in the western United States are associated with excessively strong surface and low-level winds. The biases in daily-scale temperature and precipitation in the southcentral United States are at least partially driven by biases in circulation and moisture fields. Further, the areas of agreement and disagreement with the observational data are not intuitive from analyzing the simulated mean seasonal temperature and precipitation fields alone. Our evaluation should enable more informed application and improvement of high-resolution climate models for the study of future changes in socially-and economically-relevant temperature and precipitation events.

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“…Brody et al 2007;Penning-Rowsell and Wilson 2006), human health (e.g. Gosling et al 2007;Poumadere et al 2005), agricultural production (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of high-resolution simulations of daily-scale temperature and precipitation over the United States

Walker

Diffenbaugh

2009

Clim Dyn

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“…That is, sound land regulations and strategies should be made to reduce the impervious surfaces during the development process. Local/state planners and agencies are strongly recommended to manage and monitor the spatial distributions and configurations of impervious land cover in order to effectively control the excessive runoff that might be caused by indiscriminate land development [84]. In addition, BMPs and LID practices should be installed in places where the percentage of impervious surface is too high to efficiently manage runoff and prevent flooding events.…”

Section: Discussion and Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Stormwater Management: Examining the Role of Local Planning Capacity in Mitigating Peak Surface Runoff

Kim

2016

Sustainability

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Abstract:The Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States, is rich in natural resources. Its watershed has been impacted by excessive and degraded stormwater runoff from rapid urbanization. We used an empirical approach to investigate how local planning capacity in the Chesapeake Bay watershed affected stream flow. A multiple regression analysis was employed to examine to what extent that the planning factors and other contextual variables were associated with peak runoff. Counterintuitively, we found that sub-basins included in the sample jurisdictions with a relatively high plan quality score tend to generate higher volumes of peak runoff. Results further indicate that specific geographical, basin characteristic, and biophysical factors affected mean annual peak runoff significantly. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of local planning capacity and sustainable stormwater management concepts in mitigating excessive runoff.

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“…In the United States, flood risk reduction has been dominated by the engineering strategy since the Mississippi River flooded in 1927. The Flood Control Act of 1930 supported national structural flood control works (Brody et al 2007(Brody et al , 2009. It is estimated that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has spent more than $100 billion for structural projects since the 1940s (Stein et al 2000).…”

Section: Engineering/structure Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse, Strategy, and Practice of Urban Resilience against Flooding

Su¹

2016

BMS

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Resilience discourse is shifting the very meaning of "resilience" from "bouncing back" to "bouncing forward" in the twenty-first century. International policies have provoked cities to play a proactive role in applying land-use and environmental planning strategies for disaster resilience. Strategies of urban flood resilience include prevention, accommodation, fortification, protection, retreat, and green infrastructure. In general, four models of resilience against flooding are primarily adopted: the structure model, the non-structure model, the land-use and environmental planning model, and the retreat planning model. Results indicate that planning more space for the river, wetland planning, polder and retention areas, and permeable surface design do matter in reducing flood risks. Additionally, urban growth management, directing developments and populations away from floodplains, could reduce flood risks and damages. Finally, in retreat model, urban resilience stresses retreat and evacuation to reduce flood damages. Retreat strategies and alternatives, such as property buyouts, relocations, new towns for accommodations, and land swaps for less risky areas, could be applied in helping to achieve urban flood resilience.

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The Rising Costs of Floods: Examining the Impact of Planning and Development Decisions on Property Damage in Florida

Cited by 132 publications

References 28 publications

Evaluation of high-resolution simulations of daily-scale temperature and precipitation over the United States

Evaluation of high-resolution simulations of daily-scale temperature and precipitation over the United States

Sustainable Stormwater Management: Examining the Role of Local Planning Capacity in Mitigating Peak Surface Runoff

Discourse, Strategy, and Practice of Urban Resilience against Flooding

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