Developing more useful equity measurements for flood-risk management

Adam B. Pollack (), Casey Helgeson, Carolyn Kousky and Klaus Keller
Additional contact information
Adam B. Pollack: Dartmouth College
Casey Helgeson: Penn State University
Carolyn Kousky: Environmental Defense Fund
Klaus Keller: Dartmouth College

Nature Sustainability, 2024, vol. 7, issue 6, 823-832

Abstract: Abstract Decision-makers increasingly invoke equity to motivate, design, implement and evaluate strategies for managing flood risks. Unfortunately, there is little guidance on how analysts can develop measurements that support these tasks. Here we analyse how equity can be defined and measured by surveying 167 peer-reviewed publications that explicitly state an interest in equity in the context of flood-risk management. Our main result is a taxonomy that systematizes how equity has been, and can be, defined and measured in flood-risk research. The taxonomy embodies how equity is a pluralistic and unavoidably ethical concept. Despite this, we find that most quantitative studies fail to motivate or defend critical value judgements on which their findings depend. We also find that studies often include only a single equity measurement. This practice can overlook important trade-offs between competing perspectives on equity. For example, the few studies that employ distinct principles show that conclusions about equity depend on which principle underlies a specific measurement and how that principle is operationalized. We draw on our analysis to suggest practices for developing more useful equity indicators and performing more comprehensive quantitative equity assessments in the broader context of environmental risks.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-024-01345-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:7:y:2024:i:6:d:10.1038_s41893-024-01345-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-024-01345-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().