Through the Natural Disaster Resilience Competition, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is making nearly $1 billion available to states that have recently experienced a presidentially declared major disaster. The State of Louisiana submitted an application to the Natural Disaster Resilience Competition that proposes using provided funds to elevate residential structures in Plaquemines, Lafourche, and Terrebonne parishes to reduce the risk of future flooding from storm surge. They asked RAND to help develop this proposal by performing a quantitative analysis of the baseline flood risks and different allocations of funds for mitigation across the three parishes. The results show that nonstructural work in Terrebonne and Plaquemines parishes offers the most risk mitigation, and that the State's recommended allocations provide higher benefits than costs for all three parishes.
David G. Groves,Kenneth Kuhn,Jordan R. Fischbach,et al. Analysis to Support Louisiana's Flood Risk and Resilience Program and Application to the National Disaster Resilience Competition. 2016-01-01.