The National Flood Insurance Program in Texas: An Assessment of Non-Participating Communities

Date

2019-08

Authors

White, Morgan

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Abstract

The purpose of this research is to describe the characteristics of Texas communities that do not participate in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The secondary aim is to prioritize which communities are the best candidates for participation in order to target NFIP enrollment outreach efforts. The NFIP reduces a community’s flood risk by offering federally-subsidized flood insurance to residents and by requiring communities to regulate floodplain development. Non-participating communities face various sanctions that negatively impact a community’s flood resilience. This paper provides background information and a brief history of the NFIP to provide context for this research. The scholarly literature supports describing non-participating communities in the following categories: flood risk factors, institutional capacity, type of municipality, floodplain map status, and history of NFIP participation. A scoring system was created based on the flood risk and institutional capacity variables and communities were assigned a score from 0 to 4, indicating their relative suitability for NFIP enrollment. This research identified the top 20 municipalities and the top 5 counties to target for NFIP enrollment outreach efforts. This research concludes with a discussion of the limitations of this study and ideas for future researchers.

Description

An Applied Research Project Submitted to the Department of Political Science, Texas State University, in Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Public Administration, Summer 2019.

Keywords

flood, risk, hazard, National Flood Insurance Program, participation, community, Public Administration

Citation

White, M. (2019). The national flood insurance program in Texas: An assessment of non-participating communities. Masters of Public Administration, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.

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