DDRIG in DRMS: An assessment of local government dam management action and inaction for risk reduction

作为一种基本上不为人知的基础设施，水坝在美国很少受到关注，直到一场灾难才体现出它的重要性。虽然土地利用的变化、不良的维护记录、昂贵的升级和老化的结构长期困扰着大坝管理，但气候变化加剧了意外洪水的威胁。尽管大坝垮塌的风险越来越大，但用于主动管理大坝安全的公共资金不足，以及州一级大坝安全法规的高度变化，都增加了大坝未来的不稳定性。对地方政府来说，大坝管理的负担与其他基础设施和社区需求一起增加，他们被迫在大坝相关的社区利益（如防洪和蓄水）和大坝溃坝风险（威胁下游社区）之间做出艰难的权衡。本研究的核心根本问题是，与选择不采取行动的地方政府相比，是什么因素促使地方政府采取行动。本研究解决了文献中的一个空白，并帮助大坝管理者和州监管机构改善主动和气候响应型大坝管理。随着气候变化，大坝溃坝的潜在危险增加，本研究的结果为政策和规划提供了信息，以减少溃坝风险，并改善大坝管理的决策策略。作者研究了导致地方政府积极管理水坝老化和失效的因素。本研究分为两个阶段。第一阶段是对所有50个州的1205个地方政府水坝管理者进行调查，这些管理者要么采取行动，要么没有采取行动来降低大坝失败的风险。第二阶段涉及两个案例和两个对照，以定性地深入检查上下文和程序因素。该项目通过汇集大坝管理、风险和不确定性下的决策以及当地气候变化适应方面的不同文献，推进了大坝和规划的理论。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As a largely unseen type of infrastructure, dams in the United States get little attention until a disaster conveys their importance. While changes in land use, poor maintenance records, expensive upgrades, and aging structures have long plagued dam management, climate change heightens the threat of unexpected flooding. Despite the increasing risks of dam failures, insufficient public funding for proactively managing dam safety and highly variable state level dam safety regulations add precarity to the future of dams. For local governments, the burden of dam management gets added to other infrastructural and community needs, and they are forced to make difficult tradeoffs between dam-related community benefits, such as flood control and water storage, and dam failure risks that threaten communities downstream. The fundamental issue at the center of this research is what factors motivate local governments to take action relative to local governments in comparable situations who opt not to act. This study addresses a gap in the literature and helps dam managers and state regulators improve proactive and climate-responsive dam management. As the potential dangers of dam failure increase with climate change, the findings from this research inform policies and planning to reduce failure risks and and to improve decision making strategies for dam management. The authors examine the factors that lead local governments to proactively manage their aging and failing dams. This study consists of two phases. Phase one is a survey of 1,205 local government dam managers in all 50 states who have acted or have not acted to reduce risks of failures. Phase two involves two cases and two controls to qualitatively examine the contextual and procedural factors in depth. This project advances theory on dams and planning by bringing together disparate literature on dam management, decisions under risk and uncertainty, and local climate change adaptation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.