Individual Decisions in the Face of Natural Hazards: An Analysis of Decades of Flood Insurance Purchases, Claims Filed and Risk Management under the National Flood Insurance Progra

在这个项目中，首席调查人员将承担一个广泛的研究项目，旨在提高对个人关于保险购买和采取缓解洪水活动的决策的理解。这项研究将受益于2000至2009年间对美国国家洪水保险计划(NFIP)整个全国性投资组合的独特访问。该研究将涉及三个领域：(1)个人的洪水保险决策；(2)采取洪水缓解行动；(3)NFIP的政策改革选择。在研究的第一部分，将进行统计和计量分析，以了解洪水保险购买在全国各地的变化；为了确定个人购买的保险合同的类型，以及购买如何在空间上、时间上和投保人的特征之间发生变化；并梳理出社会经济因素如何影响保险选择，从以前的经验或洪水附近的形式学习，洪水事件新闻报道的范围方面的可用性偏差，以及灾后联邦救济的存在。接下来，将使用计量经济学方法来解决一系列与洪水缓解相关的问题。家庭缓解活动在多大程度上减少了洪灾索赔？在个人层面上，什么是导致索赔金额的其他驱动因素？社区层面的缓解活动如何影响洪水索赔，以及社区层面索赔金额的其他关键驱动因素是什么？还有什么因素可以解释为什么一些社区采取了减少洪水风险的措施，另一些社区则不采取？社区层面的问题将使用NFIP？S社区评级系统的信息来回答，在该系统中，采取缓解措施的社区将获得保险费折扣。最后，这项研究将研究改革NFIP的可能选择。国会和FEMA目前正在就NFIP的改革方案进行辩论。尤其是考虑到自卡特里娜飓风以来的190亿美元债务。根据上述预期结果，研究小组将审查和比较几种风险管理改革方案，以维持更高的接受率和更多地采用具有成本效益的缓解措施，并使该方案能够更好地处理真正的灾难性损失年(例如发行巨灾债券、多年洪水保险)。所有这些方案将从它们对该方案的净成本、它们的风险和成本的公平分配以及它们的政治可接受性的角度进行审查。他说，在更广泛的影响方面，数百万美国人面临洪水风险，但对于如何确保他们得到足够的保险并随着时间的推移保持这种状态，存在严重的问题。拟议的研究工作，其与学术界、从业者和政策制定者的高水平合作努力，以及通过补充传播活动(在宾夕法尼亚大学的课堂上、指导活动、会议、政策简报和学术论文)产生的更广泛的影响，不仅将促进我们关于个人如何应对洪水风险的学术知识，而且最终将确保更多的人为未来的洪水做好充分准备。我们的发现也将对其他灾难风险具有更广泛的适用性。

In this project, the Principal Investigators will undertake a broad program of research designed to improve understanding of individual decision making regarding insurance purchases and adoption of flood mitigating activities.  This research will benefit from a unique access to the entire nationwide portfolio of the US National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) between 2000 and 2009.  The research will address three areas: (1) flood insurance decision making by individuals; (2) the adoption of flood mitigation actions, and (3) policy reform options for the NFIP.  In the first part of the reseach, statistical and econometric analyses will be conducted to understand how flood insurance purchases vary around the county; to identify the types of insurance contracts individuals purchase and how purchases vary spatially, temporally, and by characteristics of the policyholders; and to tease apart how insurance choices are influenced by socio-economic factors, learning in the form of previous experience or proximity to a flood, the availability bias in terms of the extent of news coverage of flood events, and the presence of post disaster federal relief.Next, econometric approaches will be used to address a series of questions related to flood mitigation. To what extent do household mitigation activities reduce flood claims and what are the other drivers of claim amounts at an individual level?  How do community-level mitigation activities influence flood claims, and what are the other key drivers of community-level claim amounts?  And what factors explain why some communities adopt flood risk reduction measures and others do not?  Community level questions will be answered using information on the NFIP?s Community Rating System, in which communities that adopt mitigation measures receive a discount in insurance premiums.Finally,, the research will examine possible options for reforming the NFIP.  Congress and FEMA are currently debating reform options for the NFIP, especially given its $19 billion debt since Hurricane Katrina. The research team will examine and compare, in light of the expected results described above, several risk management reform options to sustain higher take-up rates and increased adoption of cost-effective mitigation and also to make the program better able to handle truly catastrophic loss years (e.g. issuance of catastrophe bonds, multi-year flood insurance).  Those options will be examined in terms of their net cost to the program, their equitable distribution of risk and cost, and their political acceptability.             In terms of broader impacts, millions of Americans are exposed to flood risk but there are serious issues about how to assure they are adequately covered and remain so over time. The proposed research effort, its high level of collaborative efforts with academia, practitioners and policymakers, and its broader impacts through complementary dissemination activities (in the classroom at The University of Pennsylvania, mentoring activities, conferences, policy briefs, and academic papers) will not only advance our academic knowledge about how individuals behave vis-à-vis flood risk, but ultimately assure many more people are well prepared for future floods. Our findings will also have much broader applicability to other catastrophe risks.