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At the intersection of land use, flooding, and social vulnerability: a case study of New Orleans, Louisiana
Garcia-Rosabel, Stefanie
Garcia-Rosabel, Stefanie
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2024
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2025-05-26
Abstract
Urban flooding is becoming more frequent and severe due to the effects of climate change, underscoring the urgent need for effective flood risk management. Flood susceptibility maps are tools that assess the likelihood and potential impacts of various flood scenarios. They are generally used for flood risk management in coastal cities like New Orleans, Louisiana, which face recurring flooding events.
This thesis presents a comprehensive investigation into the factors that have influenced flood risk in New Orleans – a city with a history marked by catastrophic flooding events. Storms that overpower drainage systems and natural basins often lead to urban floods (Hirabayashi et al., 2021), which bring significant risks like infrastructure damage, economic setbacks, and loss of life, the latter being the second most common cause of weather-related deaths in the United States (Han & Sharif, 2021).
Furthermore, this research seeks to generate risk maps that show the risk profile of communities (at the census tract level) at the overlap of flood risk, social vulnerability index (SVI), and land use and land cover (LULC) change between 2005 and 2023. Employing satellite imagery and geospatial analysis, the study uses the Modified Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (MNDWI) to indirectly evaluate flood risks and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to assist in the assessment of land cover classification through time.
Toward these objectives, thematic mapping and geospatial analysis were used to generate a map overlay of flood risk, SVI, and LULC in New Orleans. Integrating satellite observations with SVI calculations allows for a comprehensive view of flood dynamics and social vulnerability in a major urban setting, examining the relationship between natural and built environments and their effects on flood risks. The final composite products provided insight into zones where past resilience-building and risk-reduction efforts have reduced vulnerability and zones requiring intervention. The findings convey how integrated data-driven analysis can inform urban infrastructure and policy development, advancing discussions on urban resilience and the nuanced understanding of interactions between urban settings and flood risks and potentially aiding in the implementation of adaptive strategies to build resilience in New Orleans.
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