Case study of flood risk and vulnerability in the city of Atlanta - A social, economic, technical, and institutional perspective

Abstract

The negative impacts of natural hazards on communities at all scales have been increasing. Floods comprise one such natural hazard that has emerged as one of the most destructive in the US and worldwide. While a lot of damage is estimated in terms of the cost of rebuilding infrastructure and direct loss of economy, the negative impacts of such disruptions go beyond the physical infrastructure. The impact on (and of) the social and institutional framework is rarely examined in conjunction with the physical and technical aspects. This paper examines flood vulnerability and risk of a community at an intersection of social, ecological, technical, and intuitional perspectives, and presents a framework for a holistic flood vulnerability and risk assessment that has a strong foundation in all four aspects of a resilient community. The study builds on the existing risk, vulnerability, and hazard assessment approaches, and refines them with a holistic perspective. The study uses a mixed method approach with qualitative and quantitative methodologies to assess flood occurrence probabilities, vulnerability, and risk from the social, ecological, technical, and institutional perspectives. A case study of the City of Atlanta is conducted using the framework to assess the overall vulnerability and risk of the city. The results of this analysis show that the regions that have the highest probability of flood hazard occurrence also appear to have the highest social, ecological, and technical vulnerabilities in the Atlanta area. While the results are intuitive, the applications support a focus on holistic resilience building across these four criteria. This study is potentially useful to practitioners, researchers, government agencies, and community organizations working to mitigate flood risk particularly as this risk continues to evolve with the changing climate.

Keywords

Resilience / Infrastructure / Vulnerability / Inland flooding

Relevance to resilience

The research presented in this paper is highly relevant for practitioners in institutionalizing resilience in their infrastructure and community systems. With a holistic view of risks and vulnerabilities from the standpoint of physical exposure, technical gaps and strengths, social vulnerabilities, ecological impacts, and institutional vulnerability, a city practitioner can build the capacity to better prioritize the most vulnerable segments of the community for resilience development. It also provides an understanding to navigate disaster planning and preparation with datasets that vary in granularity, scope, and timeliness. Given the existing challenges with climate change data, approaches like the ones presented in this paper will help policymakers continue to make timely resilience decisions.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Prerna Singh: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Baabak Ashuri: Writing - review & editing, Validation, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Ty Parrillo: Writing - original draft, Software, Formal analysis, Data curation. Derek Rizzi: Writing - original draft, Software, Formal analysis, Data curation. Russell Clark: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Brian Woodall: Writing - original draft, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Heejun Chang: Validation, Supervision, Methodology, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:

Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy reports financial support was provided by AT&T. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

The Research Team acknowledges and expresses appreciation to AT&T for sponsoring this study and to Argonne National Laboratory for their role in developing pertinent climate hazard data for resilience planning. The team acknowledges and thanks internal and external partners for their high levels of engagement with and support of the project. In particular, we acknowledge and thank the Atlanta Regional Commission, Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management, the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain, and the Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation Initiative at Georgia Institute of Technology - for their collaboration and support of the project, The Team also acknowledges the following academics and practitioners for their detailed review of the project report: Dr. Heejun Chang, Professor, Department of Geography, Portland State University, and Emma Bones, P.E., Water Resources Engineer, Dewberry, Atlanta. Finally, we acknowledge Jenna Krieger, M.S. student in City Planning and Civil Engineering, and, Ashlee Bryant, B.S. student in the School of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology for their contributions to the study. The authors remain exclusively responsible for the contents of this paper.

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