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

作为一种基本上看不见的基础设施，美国的大坝很少受到关注，直到一场灾难表明了它们的重要性。虽然土地使用的变化、糟糕的维护记录、昂贵的升级和老化的结构长期以来一直困扰着大坝管理，但气候变化加剧了意外洪水的威胁。尽管大坝失事的风险越来越大，但用于积极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可变，都给大坝的未来增加了不确定性。对地方政府来说，大坝管理的负担加上其他基础设施和社区的需要，他们被迫在与大坝有关的社区利益（如防洪和蓄水）与威胁下游社区的大坝倒塌风险之间做出艰难的权衡。本研究的核心问题是，相对于在类似情况下选择不采取行动的地方政府，是什么因素促使地方政府采取行动。这项研究解决了文献中的一个空白，并帮助大坝管理人员和国家监管机构提高积极主动和气候响应的大坝管理。随着气候变化，溃坝的潜在危险增加，这项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其老化和失败的大坝的因素。本研究分为两个阶段。第一阶段是对所有50个州的1,205名地方政府大坝管理人员进行调查，这些人已经采取或没有采取行动来减少失败的风险。第二阶段包括两个案例和两个对照，以深入定性地研究背景和程序因素。该项目通过汇集有关大坝管理、风险和不确定性下的决策以及当地气候变化适应的不同文献，推进了大坝和规划的理论。该奖项反映了NSF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.