Navigating Rising Waters: How Technology Can Boost Community Resilience
As the U.S. continues to grapple with the worsening effects of climate change, and the guarantee of financial support through the federal government becomes more and more uncertain, mayors, administrators and community leaders are turning to their internal teams to find opportunities to quickly improve a situation that has been years in the making.
In an oft-cited survey of mayors from 2022, a city’s building codes and zoning ordinances are often considered the two most powerful climate tools that an individual government can leverage to make the most impact on climate change at home. But not shared in the survey was the sheer difficulty of managing building and zoning regulations at the local level. As communities expand their ordinances to capture future risk, they also, by nature, expand the areas and issues that their floodplain managers must address, thereby increasing the volume of work that floodplain managers must do.
Substantial improvement ordinances are one such example. “One of the challenges that is routinely encountered is the difficulty in getting an accurate detailed list of permits,” Ed Streidl, Construction Official, Floodplain Manager and Zoning Official for Keansburg, New Jersey, told us. As a part of their cumulative substantial damage ordinance, Ed and his team must be able to find the eligible costs for all of the work done on a structure in a 10-year time frame to determine if their substantial improvement ordinance should even apply (not to mention the legwork they must then do to convey this to the property owner, approve the permits, and so on. And that’s just for this one ordinance; magnified by the number of codes and ordinances that can make up a single building code, it’s enough work to make floodplain management a full-time role in even the smallest communities.
In our work at Forerunner, we’ve had the opportunity to work hand in hand with governments at all levels to creatively handle these challenges and foster flood resilience for the long term.
Connecting Directly with the Public through Technology
Until recent years, many municipal websites were not terribly sophisticated, largely in part due to the cost and special knowledge required to maintain a website, an expertise that is rarely found on municipal staff. This has typically meant that a resident looking for information, including on building, zoning, and floodplain management, would have to call their local municipal office and request information, or, even more time-consuming, would have to go directly to the offices to get support.
As municipalities have embraced technology, however, they’ve been able to serve information to the public in new ways. For example, we provide our customers with a public portal designed to allow residents and the broader public to view property-by-property risk information, such as flood zone, required design flood elevation, and potential flood insurance requirements. This has allowed people to better understand an individual property’s risk and assess the implications to that risk on property development. It’s also made it easier for the public to self-serve, finding answers to their questions without tying up municipal staff time and resources.
Many communities like Norfolk, VA have also leveraged social media to share important information about available services and tools that the public can use to self-service, thereby ensuring that the tools they’ve invested in are truly reaching the people who need it.
Equipping Special Interest Groups
As floodplain managers and other building officials embrace technology, they’re also embracing the groups in their areas who have a direct link between the built environment and the public: real estate agents and developers. Despite high risk and growing insurance costs, coastal communities remain in-demand places to live and an influx of development and new residents not familiar with the history of risk in the area create an additional load for local floodplain management teams.
To better address this, communities like Covington, LA have embraced the folks most at the forefront of these changes: their local real estate agents. With Louisiana’s infamous disaster history, it’s not uncommon for potential buyers in the Covington area to ask a lot of questions around flooding, and Chris Brown, Building Official and Floodplain Administrator, receives many, many incoming requests for information and documentation. To help reduce the burden this was putting on his office, Chris began sharing the city’s flood information site with real estate agents. Chris will often do a quick 5-10 minute presentation with local real estate groups, ensuring they know the local regulations and have a good handle on this invaluable tool. “Sharing the public website with them reduces call volume to our offices and gives them everything they are looking for related to flood risk,” Chris said. “They seemed to pick it up quickly – they really like it.”
Similarly, the City of Hoboken, NJ, shared recently at the New Jersey Association for Floodplain Management conference that they’d worked directly with developers, architects, and residents to share flood damage prevention information and guidelines, called the Hoboken Resilient Building Design Guidelines. Initially created in 2015, these guidelines were recently updated with additional guidance on stormwater detention, backflow prevention and other best practices; further, the city implemented a pre-application compliance review process to trouble-shoot development applications prior to Board approval –– putting resilient design at the forefront of the permitting and development process.
Tying Initiatives to Dollars and Cents
While it can be difficult to execute on aspects of permitting and zoning, tying those initiatives to benefits and cost savings has been a helpful way to encourage action and ensure that resources get allocated to this important work. Flood insurance rates, as an example, are rising exponentially — more than 500% in some communities — and many people either can’t afford flood insurance or are increasingly opting out. Using the Community Rating System (CRS) to obtain greater discounts can help communities justify stronger regulations and encourage behavior change. While this may add a layer of complexity, creative and forward-thinking communities, like Keansburg, NJ and Harris County, TX, have leveraged efficiency-driving tech tools, like our floodplain management platform, to manage these programs efficiently, and to help expose the public to the program in more detail.
Given the diverse micro-climates across the U.S., it’s no surprise that flood resilience has necessitated deep, creative, and localized actions. As climate risk grows and technology evolves, it’s important that our nation’s floodplain management strategies do as well. Having the necessary tools and technology helps floodplain managers rise to meet that challenge, both today and in the future
Susanna Pho, CFM, is a co-founder of Forerunner.
