Floods represent one of the most common and costly hazards in the US. They cause fatalities, property and crop damage, destruction of public infrastructure across the country. While the federal government has been actively trying to reduce the scope of the problem for years, in the past decades, economic losses from floods have been growing (Li & Landry, 2018). Therefore, new strategies are required to adequately evaluate and eliminate the factors which contribute to the issue at the local level.
National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and its Community Rating System (CRS) play an essential role in flood management. The program is designed to support community-based hazard mitigation efforts, which often do not receive sufficient funding from local governments (Li & Landry, 2018).
Regular updates to flood zone plans and regulations for construction issued by NFIP are vital to reduce the risks. Moreover, NFIP policies are designed to ensure household owners in the natural risk zones do not have to deal with high insurance costs (Li & Landry, 2018). Overall, in the past years, NFIP initiatives helped to reduce the hazard risks and losses significantly.
However, the critics of the program note that NFIP has certain shortcomings. Qiang (2019) notes that many local flood maps are outdated. Moreover, the regulations often ignore the factors which can affect the flood preparedness of the communities. For instance, elderly populations and economically disadvantaged people represent the risk groups due to their limited mobility or poor housing quality (Qiang, 2019). The researchers believe that socioeconomic factors should play an important role in theevaluation of risks (Qiang, 2019). Hence, hazard prevention policies targeting the most vulnerable groups are required to reduce the losses from floods in specific communities.
References
Li, J., & Landry, C. E. (2018). Flood risk, local hazard mitigation, and the Community Rating System of the National Flood Insurance Program. Land Economics, 94(2), 175-198. Web.
Qiang, Y. (2019). Disparities of population exposed to flood hazards in the United States. Journal of Environmental Management, 15, 295-304. Web.