Are Underserved Populations Left Out of National Flood Mitigation Efforts and Facing Greater Impact? A Method to Assess Racial Inequality at the Census Tract Level

Abstract Development policies have systematically relegated certain populations to undesirable locations including areas at risk of flooding. Over time many properties will no longer be inhabitable and others will see damage from significant flooding. Current U.S. federal policy funds flood risk mitigation measures, such as property acquisition, relocation, and retrofitting; however, depending on various factors at the subcounty level, these actions can in some contexts provide disproportionate benefit to higher income, mostly White areas, failing to appropriately benefit underserved and exposed populations. Here, we present an exploratory method, building off existing research on programmatic-wide and event-specific analysis to explore patterns allowing state- and county-level decision-makers to identify inequalities in federal funding, potentially supporting reprioritization. This work evaluates the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims data from 1975 to 2019 and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mitigation efforts from 1989 to 2018 to explore the distribution of mitigation measures related to tract to county racial disproportionalities (for example, majority non-White census tracts in majority White counties). We find that for majority non-White census tracts in majority White counties, there are disproportionately fewer NFIP claims. This supports previous work, which shows lower levels of assistance in flood recovery, resilience, and preparedness in these areas.