This project applies system dynamics tools to understand key features of flood hazard mitigation policy and behavior. Floods are among the costliest natural hazards in the United States, account for the largest category of federal disaster declarations, and the flood hazard is broadly distributed across the United States. System dynamics is an approach to policy analysis and design that applies to problems arising in complex social, managerial, economic, or ecological systems. This approach allows us to identify key features of the policy process that may not be detected by more traditional research techniques. This is because inherent in the system dynamics approach is the accumulation of knowledge from experts in the problem being studied, followed by model building and testing, and then followed by validation of the model by the experts. The model is then refined and tested again, in an iterative process that yields a model that evolves to more accurately represent the system being studied. This research will attract hazards researchers to the system dynamics approach, and will attract the interest of system dynamics researchers to studying natural hazards policy. The combination of what is known about mitigation policy with the power of the analytic tool will yield new insights into how policy is made and how it is improved. This research will be valuable to policy makers who support more effective flood mitigation. Our research method will bring together researchers and decision makers. The results of this research will be applicable to other hazards, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, or technological hazards, such as aviation safety. Once these models are developed, we will be able to isolate the intended and, equally importantly, the unintended consequences of current and proposed mitigation and prevention policies. This project is therefore the beginning of a long-term research program involving the use of systems tools to more clearly understand the impediments to and the opportunities for improved hazard mitigation policies.
