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When it rains, it pours: integration of equity in flood risk management in Boulder County, Colorado
Stevenson, Lauren
Stevenson, Lauren
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2024
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Abstract
Underserved and overlooked groups are disproportionately impacted by flooding. Community and risk professionals seeking to mitigate this environmental injustice incorporate their ideas of equity into targeted consideration of these groups. This thesis explores how government professionals in Boulder County, Colorado define and enact equity in flood risk management. Using qualitative methods, this thesis delineates different definitions and approaches that professionals use related to equity and the barriers that they face incorporating them into local and county level flood risk management. Professionals use multiple definitions and approaches, allowing for flexibility to adjust to the context in which they use them. These results are then analyzed using the disability studies design lenses of universal design and the curb-cut effect. Connecting these frameworks to how professionals use equity creates opportunities for professionals to draw from diverse practices and disciplines to scaffold their approaches. These frameworks may help professionals translate their ideas into actions by providing frameworks created by and for consideration of an overlooked and underserved group, people with disabilities. Professionals may be able to apply these frameworks to evaluate, enact, and justify their approaches to targeting different overlooked groups, including but not limited to people with disabilities.
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