Learning to Live With Flood Risk: Florida Counties’ Accumulation of Flood Control Infrastructure

Local governments face diverse risks, but it is unclear if they address them proactively or reactively. This study tests if Florida’s counties invested in flood mitigation infrastructure reactively, after damaging floods, or proactively, after federal flood map updates from 2010 to 2019. Results from a hurdle model studying Florida’s sixty-seven counties suggest that counties developed larger flood control infrastructure systems after federal flood map updates, but flood damages make counties slightly more likely to pursue flood control infrastructure at all. This implies that governments systematically reduce risk but may be more likely to do so after learning from experience.