Wake-up Call in East Tennessee? Correlating Flood Losses to National Flood Insurance Program Enrollment (1978-2006)
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-1-2010
Description
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) provides federally-backed insurance for properties in Special Flood Hazard Areas, yet many property owners do not enroll in the program. I compared flood losses and flood insurance enrollment for three Tennessee communities: Chattanooga, Elizabethton and Pigeon Forge, to investigate the relationship between flooding and NFIP enrollment. Normalized flood losses and insurance purchases were cross-correlated using lags of zero through nine years to investigate the relationship between flood losses in one year and NFIP enrollment in subsequent years. The correlation between flood losses and NFIP enrollment is significant (r = 0.39 and 0.42 respectively, p<0.05) in the year in which flood losses occurred for Chattanooga and Elizabethton. In Pigeon Forge, flood losses correlate to NFIP enrollment in the following year (r=0.43, p=0.02).
Citation Information
Luffman, Ingrid E.. 2010. Wake-up Call in East Tennessee? Correlating Flood Losses to National Flood Insurance Program Enrollment (1978-2006). Southeastern Geographer. Vol.50(3). 305-322. https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2010.0000 ISSN: 0038-366X