Analysis to Support Louisiana's Flood Risk and Resilience Program and Application to the National Disaster Resilience Competition

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Urban Development (HUD) is making nearly $1 billion available to states that have recently experienced a presidentially declared major disaster. Successful state applicants will be able to use these funds for recovery and other efforts to improve their resilience to future disasters. On October 27, 2015, the State of Louisiana submitted an application that proposes to use provided funds to elevate residential structures in Plaquemines, Lafourche, and Terrebonne parishes to reduce the risk of future flooding from storm surge. The State of Louisiana asked RAND to help develop this proposal by performing a quantitative analysis of the baseline flood risks and different allocations of funds for mitigation across the three parishes. RAND used a flood risk model and data developed for Louisiana's 2017 Coastal Master Plan to perform an analysis and create a decision support tool to help the State evaluate flood risks and the effects of different nonstructural mitigation projects. The intended audience for this work includes policymakers working for the State of Louisiana and other interested parties. The work builds off prior RAND studies helping the State of Louisiana mitigate flood risk including Fischbach et al. The research reported here was conducted in the RAND Infrastructure Resilience and Environmental Policy program, which performs analyses on urbanization and other stresses. This includes research on infrastructure development, infrastructure financing, energy policy, urban planning and the role of public–private partnerships, transportation policy, climate response, mitigation and adaptation, environmental sustainability, and water resources management and coastal protection. Program research is supported by government agencies, foundations, and the private sector. This program is part of RAND Justice, Infrastructure and Environment, a division …