Redlining Flood Risk Literature Review HOLC Policy ArcMap Flooding
Abstract:
Redlining, a racist lending policy from the 1930s, has been observed to lead to many negative outcomes in the present day. Additionally, because of ongoing climate change, urban flood risks are expected to increase dramatically in the near future. This thesis seeks to understand the current scholarship on the relationship between redlining and flood risk and to add new research in the field. First, this thesis includes a literature review which categorizes and examines what work has been done to understand these factors’ relationship. This review revealed a gap in research: very few studies have been done relating redlining to physical flood risks, and even less have used publicly available data and/or open-source code. Thus, this thesis begins to fill this gap by performing a case study on the physical relationship between redlining and flood risk in five urban areas: Brooklyn, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Miami, and Houston with open-source code and publicly accessible data. In Brooklyn, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Miami, the research indicates that neighborhoods that received the worst of redlining contain a disproportionately high percentage of their city’s flood risk. Therefore, it is found that the relationship between redlining and flood risk likely could be a notable one and that more extensive research is needed to best inform advocacy and policy decisions.
