Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
Jupiter Intelligence, San Mateo, CA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2020 Oct 26;11(1):5361. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19188-9.
Homeowners around the world elevate houses to manage flood risks. Deciding how high to elevate a house poses a nontrivial decision problem. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends elevating existing houses to the Base Flood Elevation (the elevation of the 100-year flood) plus a freeboard. This recommendation neglects many uncertainties. Here we analyze a case-study of riverine flood risk management using a multi-objective robust decision-making framework in the face of deep uncertainties. While the quantitative results are location-specific, the approach and overall insights are generalizable. We find strong interactions between the economic, engineering, and Earth science uncertainties, illustrating the need for expanding on previous integrated analyses to further understand the nature and strength of these connections. Considering deep uncertainties surrounding flood hazards, the discount rate, the house lifetime, and the fragility can increase the economically optimal house elevation to values well above FEMA's recommendation.
世界各地的房主通过抬高房屋来管理洪水风险。决定将房屋抬高到多高是一个不小的决策问题。美国联邦紧急事务管理局（FEMA）建议将现有房屋抬高到基本洪水高程（100 年洪水的高程）加上富余高度。这一建议忽略了许多不确定性。在这里，我们使用多目标稳健决策框架分析了一个河流洪水风险管理的案例研究，以应对深度不确定性。虽然定量结果是特定于地点的，但方法和总体见解是可推广的。我们发现经济、工程和地球科学不确定性之间存在强烈的相互作用，这表明需要扩展之前的综合分析，以进一步了解这些联系的性质和强度。考虑到洪水危害的深度不确定性、贴现率、房屋寿命和脆弱性，经济上最优的房屋抬升高度可以增加到远高于 FEMA 建议的高度。
