A large portion of the U.S. population, infrastructure, and industry is located in flood prone areas; however, structural and nonstructural strategies [e.g., the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)] used to reduce the economic, social, and environmental impacts of floods continue to be based on static estimates of flood risk despite the documented influence of urbanization and climatic variation on flood peaks. Thus, the current challenge is to create a statistical framework to project future flood risk that accounts for natural climate variability, potential climate change, and impending land use changes. In view of this need, the objectives of this research are: to develop and test methods that extend traditional statistical flood risk models to project future flood risk, and to determine the relative impacts of climatic variation and anthropogenic activities on flood risk under future scenarios of climate change, land use, and emissions in the Northeastern United States. This study region was chosen because it includes a range of flood generating mechanisms, and connections between flood peaks and oceanic-atmospheric patterns have been identified therein. These research objectives will be achieved through a combination of observation-based statistical models that use extant data and physically-based hydrologic models that simulate flood series under future scenarios.
The benefits to society from this project will flow from the creation of a physical-causal based statistical framework for flood risk projection. This framework, combined with knowledge of the relative impacts of climatic variation and anthropogenic activities on flood risk under future scenarios, will provide the groundwork for new advances in water resources management. The framework could be used to develop a stochastic NFIP, and would facilitate impact assessments, such as analysis of the implications associated with land use planning and management scenarios. In addition, this project will: increase K-12 student awareness to the consequences of human activities on hydrologic processes, increase K-12 student interest in science and engineering careers, and increase undergraduate student interest to pursue advanced science and engineering degrees. These outcomes will be accomplished through the integration of research and educational student experiences at high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels. In particular, field trips for area ninth grade students will be held throughout the duration of the project, an interactive web module and corresponding lesson plan will be developed for use beyond completion of this project, graduate and undergraduate students will participate in outreach activities, and research themes will be integrated into undergraduate water resources coursework. Special efforts toward recruiting and retaining women will be made through outreach activities and positive mentoring of summer undergraduate researchers.
