Coastal flooding can wreak havoc on communities, destroying homes and businesses and forcing residents to permanently relocate. Scientists can identify at-risk areas well in advance, but creating and carrying out policies to encourage people to preemptively move is considerably more difficult.
Vicki Bier, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will use a new National Science Foundation grant to test different strategies for incentivizing preemptive relocation.
Through the three-year, $403,756 grant, Bier will employ game theory to model the interactions between local government and private residents and identify effective solutions. The project will focus on two geographic areas with relevant flood risks: Brooklyn, New York, and Galveston, Texas.
Bier is an expert in risk analysis and decision analysis, particularly in regard to protecting critical infrastructure and homeland security.