The United States Geological Survey Water Resources Research Act Program: Grant Details for Project 2023NJ156B

Details for Project ID NJ_2023_FENG-QIU

Assessing hydrologically sensitive areas as a novel indicator of flood risks using a hedonic pricing method

Institute: New Jersey
Year Established: 2023 Start Date: 2023-09-01 End Date: 2024-08-31
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $5,000

Principal Investigators: Wenlong Feng, Zeyuan Qiu

Project Summary: The FEMA 100-year floodplains map has been used as a cornerstone for enhancing community flood resilience, but the 100-year floodplains cover only a part of the high-risk flooding areas and are not updated frequently. Additionally, the 100-year floodplains do not identify the upland areas extremely vulnerable to flash flood. These limitations hinder the improvement of flood resilience in local communities and flood management cooperation among nearby communities. The hydrologically sensitive areas (HSA) are a small portion of areas in landscapes that are actively contributing to runoff generation and accumulation and can be readily identified based on hydrological sensitivity and connectivity using a geographic information systems tool. HSAs can be used as a novel tool in supplement to the FEMA floodplain map to identify the highrisk flooding areas. This study aims to lay a science foundation for using HSA as a novel indicator of flood risks through a hedonic pricing method. The underlying hypothesis is that the homes located in HSAs generally experience a sale price discount due to flood and flood-related risks. Single-family home sales between 2010 and 2020 in three municipalities (Hillsborough, Manville, and Montgomery) of Somerset County, NJ will be analyzed. To tease out the effect of HSA from floodplains, individual effects of the presence of floodplain, HSA and their joint effects will be tested in three hedonic pricing models. Coefficients response to floodplains, HSAs, and their intersection are expected to be statistically significant and negative, indicating a discount on home sale prices, which support the hypothesis.