Maura Allaire

The future role of dams in the United States of America

Storage and controlled distribution of water have been key elements of a human strategy to overcome the space and time variability of water, which have been marked by catastrophic droughts and floods throughout the course of civilization. In the United States, the peak of dam building occurred in the mid-20th century with knowledge limited to the scientific understanding and hydrologic records of the time. Ecological impacts were considered differently than current legislative and regulatory controls would potentially dictate. Additionally, future costs such as maintenance or removal beyond the economic design life were not fully considered. The converging risks associated with aging water storage infrastructure and uncertainty in climate in addition to the continuing need for water storage, flood protection, and hydropower result in a pressing need to address the state of dam infrastructure across the nation. Decisions regarding the future of dams in the United States may, in turn, influence regional water futures through groundwater outcomes, economic productivity, migration, and urban growth. We advocate for a comprehensive national water assessment and a formal analysis of the role dams play in our water future. We emphasize the urgent need for environmentally and economically sound strategies to integrate surface and groundwater storage infrastructure in local, regional, and national water planning considerations. A research agenda is proposed to assess dam failure impacts and the design, operation, and need for dams considering both paleo and future climate, utilization of groundwater resources, and the changing societal values toward the environment.

The Long-Term Dynamics of Mortality Benefits from Improved Water and Sanitation in Less Developed Countries

The problem of inadequate access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in less-developed nations has received much attention over the last several decades (most recently in the Millennium Development Goals), largely because diseases associated with such conditions contribute substantially to mortality in poor countries. We present country-level projections for WASH coverage and for WASH-related mortality in developing regions over a long time horizon (1975–2050) and provide dynamic estimates of the economic value of potential reductions in this WASH-related mortality, which go beyond the static results found in previous work. Over the historical period leading up to the present, our analysis shows steady and substantial improvements in WASH coverage and declining mortality rates across many developing regions, namely East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The economic value of potential health gains from eliminating mortality attributable to poor water and sanitation has decreased substantially, and in the future will therefore be modest in these regions. Where WASH-related deaths remain high (in parts of South Asia and much of Sub-Saharan Africa), if current trends continue, it will be several decades before economic development and investments in improved water and sanitation will result in the capture of these economic benefits. The fact that health losses will likely remain high in these two regions over the medium term suggests that accelerated efforts are needed to improve access to water and sanitation, though the costs and benefits of such efforts in specific locations should be carefully assessed.

Economic costs incurred by households in the 2011 Greater Bangkok flood

This paper presents the first comprehensive estimates of the economic costs experienced by households in the 2011 Greater Bangkok flood. More generally, it contributes to the literature by presenting the first estimates of flood costs based on primary data collected from respondents of flooded homes using in-person interviews. Two rounds of interviews were conducted with 469 households in three of the most heavily affected districts of greater Bangkok. The estimates of economic costs include preventative costs, ex post losses, compensation received, and any new income generated during the flood. Median household economic costs were US

Disaster loss and social media: Can online information increase flood resilience?

3089, equivalent to about half of annual household expenditures (mean costs were US

National trends in drinking water quality violations

5261). Perhaps surprisingly given the depth and duration of the flood, most houses incurred little structural damage (although furniture, appliances, and cars were damaged). Median economic costs to poor and nonpoor households were similar as a percentage of annual household expenditures (53% and 48%, respectively). Compensation payments received from government did little to reduce the total economic losses of the vast majority of households. Two flood-related deaths were reported in our sample—both in low-income neighborhoods. Overall, ex post damage was the largest component of flood costs (66% of total). These findings are new, important inputs for the evaluation of flood control mitigation and preventive measures that are now under consideration by the Government of Thailand. The paper also illustrates how detailed microeconomic data on household costs can be collected and summarized for policy purposes.

What Is Nuisance Flooding? Defining and Monitoring an Emerging Challenge

When confronted with natural disasters, individuals around the world increasingly use online resources to become informed of forecasted conditions and advisable actions. This study tests the effectiveness of online information and social media in enabling households to reduce disaster losses. The 2011 Bangkok flood is utilized as a case study since it was one of the first major disasters to affect a substantial population connected to social media. The role of online information is investigated with a mixed methods approach. Both quantitative (propensity score matching) and qualitative (in-depth interviews) techniques are employed. The study relies on two data sources – survey responses from 469 Bangkok households and in-depth interviews with twenty-three internet users who are a subset of the survey participants. Propensity score matching indicates that social media enabled households to reduce flood losses by an average of 37% (USD 3,708 per household), using a nearest neighbor estimator. This reduction is substantial when considering that household flood losses for the matched sample averaged USD 8,278. Social media offered information not available from other sources, such as localized and nearly real-time updates of flood location and depth. With this knowledge, households could move belongings to higher ground before floodwaters arrived. These findings suggest that utilizing social media users as sensors could better inform populations during disasters. Overall, the study reveals that online information can enable effective disaster preparedness and reduce losses. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Using practical and social information to influence flood adaptation behavior

Significance Drinking water contaminants pose a harm to public health. Some can cause immediate illness, such as the 16 million cases of acute gastroenteritis that occur each year at US community water systems. Here, we show that health-based drinking water quality violations are widespread, with 9–45 million people possibly affected during each of the past 34 years. While relatively few community water systems (3–10%) incur health-based violations in a given year, improved compliance is needed to ensure safe drinking water nationwide. Currently, state enforcement agencies lack a systematic procedure to select systems for additional inspection and monitoring. We identify hot spots and vulnerability factors associated with violations, which can allow public policies to target underperforming water systems. Ensuring safe water supply for communities across the United States is a growing challenge in the face of aging infrastructure, impaired source water, and strained community finances. In the aftermath of the Flint lead crisis, there is an urgent need to assess the current state of US drinking water. However, no nationwide assessment has yet been conducted on trends in drinking water quality violations across several decades. Efforts to reduce violations are of national concern given that, in 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards. In this paper, we evaluate spatial and temporal patterns in health-related violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act using a panel dataset of 17,900 community water systems over the period 1982–2015. We also identify vulnerability factors of communities and water systems through probit regression. Increasing time trends and violation hot spots are detected in several states, particularly in the Southwest region. Repeat violations are prevalent in locations of violation hot spots, indicating that water systems in these regions struggle with recurring issues. In terms of vulnerability factors, we find that violation incidence in rural areas is substantially higher than in urbanized areas. Meanwhile, private ownership and purchased water source are associated with compliance. These findings indicate the types of underperforming systems that might benefit from assistance in achieving consistent compliance. We discuss why certain violations might be clustered in some regions and strategies for improving national drinking water quality.

Water and Sanitation: Economic Losses from Poor Water and Sanitation – Past, Present, and Future

Nuisance flooding (NF) refers to low levels of inundation that do not pose significant threats to public safety or cause major property damage, but can disrupt routine day-to-day activities, put added strain on infrastructure systems such as roadways and sewers, and cause minor property damage. NF has received some attention in the context of low-lying coastal cities exposed to increasingly higher high tides, a consequence of sea level rise, which exceeds the heights of coastal topography. However, low levels of flooding are widespread and deserve greater attention. Here a simple, quantitative definition of NF is proposed based on established flood intensity thresholds for flood consequences (e.g., pedestrian safety, property damage, and health risks). Based on a wide range of literature including hydrology, transportation, public health risk, and safety impacts, we define NF based on depth >3 cm and <10 cm, regardless of the source. This definition of NF is not limited to high tide flooding but rather is inclusive of all possible flood drivers including pluvial, fluvial, and oceanic and can capture trends in NF resulting from trends in, and compounding effects of, flood drivers. Furthermore, we also distinguish between NF as a process and NF as an event, which is important for linking NF to societal impacts and developing effective policy interventions and mitigation strategies. Potential applications and implications of NF monitoring are also presented.

The hydromorphology of an urbanizing watershed using multivariate elasticity

As the prospect for more frequent and severe extreme weather events gains scientific support, many nations are evaluating mitigation and adaptation options. Insurance and home retrofits could reduce household welfare losses due to flood events. Yet, even after disasters, households often fail to take risk mitigation actions. This paper presents the first randomized field experiment that tests the effect of information provision on household uptake of flood insurance and home retrofits. A sample of 364 flood-prone households in Bangkok was randomly split into treatment and control groups. The treatment group received practical details on home retrofits and flood insurance as well as social information regarding the insurance purchase decisions of peers. Results indicate that the information intervention increased insurance purchases by about five percentage points, while no effect was detected for home retrofits. This effect is nearly equal to the increase in uptake that the national insurance program in Thailand has achieved through all other means since its establishment in 2012. If scaled up to include all uninsured, flood-prone households in Bangkok, nearly 70,000 additional households could be insured. The results suggest that well-designed information interventions could increase uptake of flood insurance, without additional premium subsidies or mandates. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

U.S. Energy Subsidies: Effects on Energy Markets and Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Introduction Diseases associated with poor water, sanitation, and hygiene comprise on average 6–7% of the annual mortality in less developed countries (World Health Organization 2004; Pruss-Ustun et al . 2008). A growing body of research suggests that a variety of different types of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions are effective and capable of delivering large health benefits to target populations (Hutton and Haller 2004; Fewtrell et al . 2005; Luby et al . 2005; Clasen et al . 2007; Hutton et al . 2007). Many of these interventions – the provision of improved community water supplies, point-of-use water treatment, hygiene education, on-site sanitation – can be delivered at very low cost, but their adoption remains surprisingly low (Whittington et al . 2012). Piped water and sewerage services, the gold standard for water and sanitation in the developed world, do not seem to be necessary to achieve many of the health benefits from improving existing water and sanitation conditions. Household demand for these network services, however, is much higher than for low-cost interventions, perhaps because they bring other types of improvements that households value, such as time savings and greater convenience (Whittington et al . 2009). In this chapter we present a global analysis of the “economic losses” associated with inadequate water and sanitation from 1950 to 2050. These estimates provide an entry point for thinking about the challenges of ameliorating water and sanitation services in poor countries. Using a simple simulation model, we calculate the economic losses from the morbidity and mortality associated with inadequate water and sanitation services, and from the time spent collecting water from outside the home, in less developed countries during the period 1950 to 2008. We then use projections of GDP and population growth to forecast economic losses from 2008 to 2050. We compare total economic losses with non-monetary measures of disease burden, such as deaths due to WASH-related diseases.