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，主要研究人员将开展广泛的研究计划，旨在提高对购买保险和采用防洪活动的个人决策的理解。 这项研究将受益于2000年至2009年美国国家洪水保险计划（NFIP）的整个全国范围内的投资组合的独特访问。 研究将涉及三个方面：（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。 在研究的第一部分中，将进行统计和计量分析，以了解如何购买洪水保险在全国各地的变化，以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点变化;并梳理出保险选择如何受到社会经济因素的影响，以以前的经验或接近洪水的形式学习，洪水事件的新闻报道的程度方面的可用性偏差，以及灾后联邦救济的存在。接下来，计量经济学方法将被用来解决一系列与洪水缓解有关的问题。家庭减灾活动在多大程度上减少了洪水索赔，个人索赔额的其他驱动因素是什么？ 社区一级的减灾活动如何影响洪水索赔，社区一级索赔额的其他关键驱动因素是什么？ 哪些因素可以解释为什么一些社区采取减少洪水风险的措施，而另一些社区则没有？ 社区层面的问题将使用NFIP上的信息来回答？最后，研究将探讨改革NFIP的可能方案。 国会和联邦应急管理局目前正在讨论NFIP的改革方案，特别是考虑到自卡特里娜飓风以来其190亿美元的债务。研究小组将根据上述预期结果，审查和比较几种风险管理改革方案，以维持较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份（例如，发行灾难债券，多年洪水保险）。 这些方案将根据其对计划的净成本、风险和成本的公平分配以及政治上的可接受性进行审查。 就更广泛的影响而言，数百万美国人面临洪水风险，但如何确保他们得到充分覆盖并随着时间的推移保持这种状况存在严重问题。拟议的研究工作、与学术界、从业人员和决策者的高级别协作努力及其通过补充性传播活动产生的更广泛影响（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）不仅将推进我们关于个人如何维斯洪水风险的学术知识，但最终确保更多的人为未来的洪水做好准备。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.