Abstract
Flooding is the most frequent and costly natural hazard in the United States. Anthropogenic climate change and the continued development of land prone to flooding are contributing to intensifying flood risk. This dissertation aims to provide both a conceptual framework and an empirical foundation for the connections between land use and flood risk. Across three studies, this dissertation measures floodplain development outcomes, models where and how floodplain development translates into flood harms and damage, and identifies combinations of policy tools that are successful in limiting floodplain development. Chapter 2 seeks to measure the extent of new development in floodplains using two novel community-level indexes of floodplain development: the Floodplain Development Index (FDI) and the Floodplain Housing Index (FHI). The results of this analysis show that, despite substantial floodplain development, most communities have actually limited new flood exposure relative to the flood hazard they face. Chapter 3 seeks to connect floodplain development to flood harm by assessing the relationship between residential floodplain development and residential repetitive loss properties. The results of this analysis reveal a significant positive relationship between floodplain housing development and repetitive loss properties, confirming the expectation that communities with more flood exposure are more likely to sustain chronic flood harms. Chapter 4 connects land use management actions to floodplain development outcomes in order to identify policy pathways for limiting residential floodplain development using a case study of Monmouth County, New Jersey. Results reveal that three distinct combinations of hazard mitigation capabilities are sufficient for producing the outcome of limiting floodplain housing development. Overall, this dissertation traces the chain that runs from exposure to harm and from land use actions to exposure by measuring floodplain development, connecting it to the harms it produces, and identifying policy pathways for limiting it.