FLOOD MITIGATION IN THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES Summary of Stakeholder Meetings Across Four Communities 2019 ResilientAmerica Program The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Contents Resilient America Program ........................................................................................................................... 1 Project Overview ........................................................................................................................................... 2 Project Goals ............................................................................................................................................. 3 Project Activities ....................................................................................................................................... 3 Summary of Stakeholder Meetings .............................................................................................................. 4 Successful Flood Mitigation Activities....................................................................................................... 4 Biloxi, MS ............................................................................................................................................... 4 Ellicott City ............................................................................................................................................ 6 Roanoke ................................................................................................................................................ 8 Savannah and Tybee Island ................................................................................................................. 10 Lessons Learned & Best Practices ........................................................................................................... 11 Building and Cultivating Relationships ................................................................................................ 12 Community Outreach and Engaging the Public .................................................................................. 12 Partnerships and Collaboration .......................................................................................................... 12 Risk Communication ........................................................................................................................... 12 Business Continuity Planning .............................................................................................................. 13 Flood Documentation and Recordkeeping ......................................................................................... 13 Beware of Institutional Knowledge Loss ............................................................................................. 13 Prioritizing Damage Assessments ....................................................................................................... 13 FEMA disaster assistance is not immediate ........................................................................................ 13 Reimbursing Nonprofits’ Recovery Efforts ......................................................................................... 13 Incentivizing Flood Mitigation............................................................................................................. 14 Flood Mitigation and Multiple Benefits .............................................................................................. 14 Worst-case Scenario Planning............................................................................................................. 14 Taking Care of the Families of First Responders ................................................................................. 14 First Responders are also Victims of Disasters ................................................................................... 14 Challenges and Needs ............................................................................................................................. 14 Lack of Flood Insurance....................................................................................................................... 14 Unpredictability of Flash Flooding ...................................................................................................... 15 Mitigating the Impacts of Flooding for Vulnerable Communities ...................................................... 15 The Economic Costs of Flood Mitigation ............................................................................................ 15 Understanding the Impact of Development on Flooding ................................................................... 16 Communicating Flood Risk .................................................................................................................. 16 Flood Mitigation in the Southeastern United States Resilient America Program In 2012, the National Research Council (NRC) released a report, Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative,1 about critical issues and strategic steps the United States can take to reduce impacts on the nation’s communities from natural and human- induced disasters. The 2012 report defines resilience as “the ability to prepare and Resilience is the ability to prepare and plan for, plan for, absorb, recover from, or more absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to successfully adapt to actual or potential actual or potential adverse events. adverse events.” The report provided several recommendations the nation could take to reduce impacts on communities from disasters and build resilience to those disasters. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Resilient America Roundtable was created in 2014 to implement four of these recommendations in communities: 1. Understand, communicate, and manage risk; 2. Measure resilience in communities; 3. Build or strengthen partnerships with stakeholders vested in building community resilience; 4. Share information about and get access to tools, data, best practices, and experts needed to build community resilience. The Roundtable provides the venue for current research, science, and evidence-based foundations to inform whole community strategies for building resilience. It focuses on the implementation and innovation of new approaches to build resilience to disasters and other disruptions; application and testing of tools for improved understanding of risk; and connecting and facilitating partnerships among scientists, data providers, practitioners, and decision makers. In its first five years, the Roundtable’s core program was its community pilot program that partnered with four U.S. communities—Cedar Rapids/Linn County, IA; Charleston, SC; Central Puget Sound region, WA; and Tulsa, OK—to implement the above four recommendations. Through this community pilot program, Resilient America developed new mechanisms for community engagement, facilitated relationship building among diverse community stakeholders, and brought science into local decision making. The community pilot came to a successful close in 2018. In its first five years, the roundtable expanded from being just a roundtable to becoming the Resilient America Program2 to reflect its expanded portfolio of work: the community pilot program, convening activities, consensus studies, community engagement efforts, and role-playing games. Resilient America has hosted workshops, conferences, and tabletop exercises nationally and internationally. It has conducted three consensus studies: Building and Measuring Community Resilience: Actions for 1 National Research Council. 2012. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13457. 2 For more information about the Resilient America Program, visit https://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/resilientamerica/ Page 1 of 17 Communities and the Gulf Research Program (2019)3; Framing the Challenge of Urban Flooding in the United States (2019)4; and Strengthening Post-Hurricane Supply Chain Resilience: Observations from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (2020).5 It partnered with the Koshland Science Museum (now LabX6) to develop the role-playing game, Extreme Event.7 And its stories have been published by the World Economic Forum (2015) and European Review (2018). Since the close of its community pilot program in 2018, the RAP continued its community engagement focus in the southeastern region of the United States and in southeast Texas to tackle issues around flood risk, preparedness, and mitigation. Project Overview Resilient America visited select communities in the southeastern region of United States that recently experienced flood-related disasters to advance understanding of what mitigation efforts look like at the local level. Specifically, this project investigated the range of mitigation actions and investments taking place in communities, the challenges communities face mitigating floods, and what communities need that will enable them to make investments in mitigation. Resilient America conducted discussions with diverse stakeholder groups in four different communities—Biloxi, MS; Ellicott City, MD; Roanoke, Salem, and Vinton, VA; and Savannah and Tybee Island, GA—about their flood mitigation efforts, successes, and challenges. 3 Building and Measuring Community Resilience: Actions for Communities and the Gulf Research Program is available at https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25383/building-and-measuring-community-resilience-actions-for-