Department of Public Policy, Rochester Institute of Technology, 1327 Eastman Hall, 1 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA.
Department of Marine and Coastal Environmental Science, Texas A&M University at Galveston, PO Box 1675, Bldg. 3029, Room 362, Galveston, TX, 77553, USA.
J Environ Manage. 2024 Nov;370:122630. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122630. Epub 2024 Sep 25.
Hazard mitigation encompasses a wide range of strategies, including building protective structures, retrofitting existing buildings, regulating land use, and relocating from high-risk areas. Among these, relocation or retreat stands out as markedly different from the other mitigation measures. In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of retreat and retrofit as two distinct mitigation options, using a longitudinal dataset of mitigation projects funded by two federal programs, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) and Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) between 2000 and 2019. We find that most communities receiving federal grants choose either buyouts (a form of retreat) or retrofits, with very few pursuing both. Our analysis explores the factors influencing a community's implementation of general mitigation, retreat or retrofit projects at the zip code level. We show that disaster damage generally increases HMGP-funded mitigation projects, with more severely affected localities performing more buyouts than retrofits. For both programs, we find that localities with less levee protection tend to implement more buyouts, and buyouts are more common in localities with lower housing prices, while more retrofits occur in higher-priced areas. Notably, our results indicate that communities with more Black or Hispanic populations undertake fewer projects under both programs, suggesting a potentially inequitable distribution of mitigation resources across U.S. communities.
灾害缓解涵盖了广泛的策略，包括建造防护结构、改造现有建筑、规范土地利用和从高风险地区迁移。在这些策略中，迁移或撤退明显不同于其他缓解措施。在本文中，我们使用 2000 年至 2019 年期间由两个联邦项目（灾害缓解赠款计划（HMGP）和洪水缓解援助（FMA）资助的缓解项目的纵向数据集，对撤退和改造作为两种不同的缓解选择进行了比较分析。我们发现，大多数获得联邦赠款的社区选择了购房（撤退的一种形式）或改造，很少同时选择两者。我们的分析探讨了影响社区在邮政编码层面实施一般缓解、撤退或改造项目的因素。我们表明，灾害破坏通常会增加 HMGP 资助的缓解项目，受灾更严重的地区比改造地区进行更多的购房。对于这两个项目，我们发现堤坝保护较少的地区更倾向于进行更多的购房，而房价较低的地区更常见购房，而房价较高的地区则更倾向于进行更多的改造。值得注意的是，我们的结果表明，在这两个项目中，人口中黑人和西班牙裔人口较多的社区所进行的项目较少，这表明美国社区之间缓解资源的分配可能存在不平等。
