Modeling Intergovernmental Fiscal Impacts of Coastal Hazards

这个抗灾研究补助金项目通过创造关于沿海风暴和洪水事件如何影响市政财政的新知识，有助于促进国家健康、繁荣和福利。灾害可能导致地方政府财政困难，收入减少，支出增加，从而影响其提供充足的地方公共服务（如警务、公共工程和教育）的能力。当地的困境程度在一定程度上取决于其他行为者的行为，包括当地业主和更高级别的政府。该项目收集了新泽西州20年来财产税记录、市政预算、州和联邦预算的数据，以创建一个财政影响模型；对沿海居民进行电话调查，并与政府官员进行焦点小组调查，以创建行为模型；并与他们一起支持一个位于新泽西州沿海地区的利益相关者团体的审议。该小组将探讨如何激励更有效地管理沿海灾害，并提高沿海风暴和洪水事件如何影响市政当局的透明度。改善沿海地区的风险管理，部分取决于通过改变政府间公共财政规则，重新调整家庭和地方司法管辖区的激励机制。本项目将财政影响分析方法（一种广泛用于评估土地利用开发提案对地方财政影响的方法）扩展到沿海灾害对地方财政产生影响的情况。它还开发了一种新的基于主体的政府间财政关系模型，以便对替代激励结构进行战略探索。该项目将这两种工具集成到一个模拟建模系统中，该系统可以支持利益相关者审议更具保护性的沿海风险政策。更广泛地说，该项目将帮助地方决策者减轻市政影响范围以外的适应决策带来的财政压力。从公平的角度来看，它服务于财政困难的沿海社区，这些社区往往有弱势居民居住在洪泛区。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。

This Disaster Resilience Research Grant (DRRG) project contributes to the advancement of national health, prosperity and welfare by creating new knowledge on how coastal storm and flood events affect municipal finances. Disasters may cause fiscal distress for local governments when revenues shrink and expenses grow, thereby affecting their ability to provide adequate local public services such as policing, public works, and education. The extent of local distress depends in part on what other actors do, including local property owners and higher levels of government. This project collects twenty years of New Jersey data from property tax records, municipal budgets, and state and federal budgets to create a fiscal impact model; uses a phone survey of coastal residents and focus groups with public officials to create a behavioral model; and joins them to support the deliberations of a stakeholder group based in coastal New Jersey. This group will explore ways to incentivize more effective management of coastal hazards and increase transparency about how coastal storm and flood events affect municipalities. Better risk management in coastal areas depends in part on re-aligning the incentives experienced by households and local jurisdictions by changing the rules of the intergovernmental public finance. This project extends the method of Fiscal Impact Analysis, a widely used method to assess the local fiscal impacts of land use development proposals, to the situation where coastal hazards cause local fiscal impacts. It also develops a novel agent-based model of intergovernmental fiscal relations to allow strategic exploration of alternative incentive structures. The project integrates these two tools into a simulation modeling system that can support stakeholder deliberations about more protective coastal risk policy. More broadly, the project will help local decision makers to mitigate fiscal stresses from adaptation decisions outside the municipal sphere of influence. From an equity perspective, it serves fiscally distressed coastal communities that often have vulnerable residents residing in the flood plain.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.