Adaptations to Repetitive Flooding: Understanding Cross-Cultural and Legal Possibilities for Long-Term Solutions to Flooding Disaster (2019 - 2025)

There is growing consensus among Arctic researchers and nations that it is important to operationalize Arctic scientific knowledge for the purposes of achieving societal goals, including better understanding and adapting to extreme events and disasters. In Alaska and throughout the US, persistent and habitual floods are a particularly expensive and challenging disaster to solve. Repetitive flooding properties account for only 1% of all properties represented by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) yet are responsible for approximately 38% of the claims made. In Alaska, solutions to repetitive flooding for Inupiat and other Indigenous communities in the Arctic have not been forthcoming, despite experiencing repetitive flooding events. Additionally, there is some indication that policy options for relocation are more challenging when decision-making occurs at the community level, as it often does in Indigenous communities, instead of at the household level.
This project addressed two lines of inquiry into this complex problem. First, we analyzed relocation policy options for communities experiencing repetitive flooding. We did so by analyzing policy application when and where communities and individuals have relocated in Alaska and the US, including how bureaucratic discretion has been used in relocation scenarios. Included in this analysis is mapping the political and economic costs, historical corollaries, and feasibility of relocation policy solutions - from creating wholly new agencies, to amending current hazard mitigation and disaster policies to include a wider range of options for relocation. Mapping possible solutions to repetitive flooding is critical and might be applied to hundreds of communities across the United States. Our second line of inquiry was to examine what constitutes culturally relevant relocation from an Inupiat perspective. By analyzing adaptation from an Inupiat perspective, we better understood how cultural subjectivities interact with disaster response to inform culturally-relevant adaptation strategies. This award was co-funded by the Prediction of and Resilience against Extreme Events (PREEVENTS) program.
Our publications, white papers, and other photographic data from the project can be found here: https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/adaptationlaw/
Sensitive data is protected at OSU and with tribal oversight on a non-public website. This project was award #1921045.