New study with UD researcher examines federal homeowner buyouts.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been offering voluntary buyout programs to homeowners in flood-prone neighborhoods since the 1980s.
And with increasingly powerful storms battering coastlines and flooding becoming more ubiquitous after heavy rains, these programs and the idea of managed coastal retreat have continued to garner more and more attention.
The University of Delaware has been at the forefront of trying to understand where and why FEMA-funded buyouts are offered and accepted. After Hurricane Sandy, Professors Sue McNeil, Joe Trainor, and Alex Greer (then a doctoral student at UD) studied why homeowners accept FEMA-funded buyouts.
Now, a new study by a team involving UD researcher A.R. Siders is the first to examine nationwide data on FEMA’s buyout program. “Managed retreat through voluntary buyouts of flood-prone properties,” a study led by University of Miami’s Katharine J. Mach, was published Wednesday, Oct. 9 in Science Advances.
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