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Abstract
Flooding is among the most frequent and costly natural disasters globally, and flood risk is increasing due to urbanization, extreme rainfall, sea level rise, and other factors. To understand the patterns and social effects of growing flood risk, this research is situated at the intersection of engineering and social sciences to advance modeling and characterization of physical flood hazards, the cycle of flood resilience, and social consequences. First, I used dasymetric mapping techniques with flood exposure and demographic data to develop a novel measure of flood inequity and assess how inequity varies with flood frequency. I found that high inequity does not correspond with high exposure with the largest inequities occurring for the 10% annual exceedance probability (AEP) event. Second, I employed Monte Carlo simulations in HEC-RAS to create probabilistic floodplain maps that identify flood-prone areas outside of the Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA), accounting for non-stationarity and uncertainty. I found the SFHA captures less than half of the estimated exposed population for the 1% AEP future event. Hazard zones mapped for the current 0.2% AEP event align with the 80th percentile of inundation from the 1% AEP future event. While updating official maps to the 0.2% AEP event improves risk communication, there are potential disproportionate effects on the property values of non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic homeowners. Third, I completed a systematic literature review of flood risk assessments incorporating social vulnerability and found limited connections between conceptual underpinnings and assessment methods. To address this limitation, I presented a novel Flood Recovery framework depicting the role of susceptibility and capacity through the stages of a flood. Lastly, I applied the framework to develop a flood-tailored measure of social vulnerability and compared its performance against hazard-agnostic measures. I evaluated the theoretical consistency of each index using statistical analyses, and the flood-tailored measure performs best, showcasing the benefit of grounding such measures with a conceptual framework. Bridging of engineering and social science approaches in the context of flood risk provides avenues for improving tools and interdisciplinary understanding that state agencies and local municipalities can use to improve flood resilience.