Modeling residual flood risk behind levees, Upper Mississippi River, USA

Nicholas Pinter, Fredrik Huthoff, Jennifer Dierauer, Jonathan W.F. Remo and Amanda Damptz

Environmental Science & Policy, 2016, vol. 58, issue C, 131-140

Abstract: Flood protection from levees is a mixed blessing, excluding water from the floodplain but creating higher flood levels (“surcharges”) and promoting “residual risk” of flood damages. This study completed 2D hydrodynamic modeling and flood-damage analyses for the 459km2 Sny Island levee system on the Upper Mississippi River. These levees provide large economic benefits, at least $51.1 million per year in prevented damages, the large majority provided to the agricultural sector and a small subset of low-elevation properties. However these benefits simultaneously translate into a large residual risk of flood damage should levees fail or be overtopped; this risk is not recognized either locally in the study area nor in national policy. In addition, the studied levees caused surcharges averaging 1.2–1.5m and locally as high as 2.4m, consistent with other sites and studies. The combined hydraulic and economic modeling here documented that levee-related surcharge+the residual risk of levee overtopping or failure can lead to negative benefits, meaning added long-term flood risk. Up to 31% of residential structures in the study area, 8% of agricultural structures, and 22% of commercial structures received negative benefits, totaling $562,500 per year. Although counterintuitive, structures at the margin of a leveed floodplain can incur negative benefits due to greater flood levels resulting from levees purportedly built to protect them. National levee policies and plans for local projects are unbalanced, crediting levee benefits but rarely fully planning for adverse impacts or considering alternatives.

Keywords: Flooding; Floodplain management; Social vulnerability; Hydraulic modeling; Mississippi River (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146290111630003X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:enscpo:v:58:y:2016:i:c:p:131-140

DOI: 10.1016/j.envsci.2016.01.003

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental Science & Policy is currently edited by M. Beniston

More articles in Environmental Science & Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().