Why I decided to pursue a Ph.D.
I was cleaning my computer and came across the essay I wrote as part of my admission package. I thought I would share it here.
About 4:30 a.m. on New Year’s Eve morning 2005, the phone rang. The call was from a tenant in one of the rental units my husband managed. “Gary, come quick--we’re flooding.” We jumped out of bed and tried to make our way over to the apartment. The shortest route to the apartments was by the hospital, but the road was flooded. We took the long way over the hill and around to“the hub” in San Anselmo, where we joined all the local news trucks and the County’s Swift River Rescue Team. The life-threatening floodwater was flowing fast and furious through the heart of downtown San Anselmo. There was nothing we could do except watch. I have been an engineer for 30 years and have developed countless flood models, but nothing compares to seeing the power of raging floodwaters firsthand!
Amazingly, by 10:00 a.m., the floodwaters had all but disappeared, and the cleanup could begin. At the peak of the flooding, the apartments were inundated with three feet of water, thankfully no one was injured. One of the tenants was an elderly retired army nurse. We knocked on her door to see if she was OK and to assess the damage in her home. When she opened the door, wearing her housedress and socks, we saw the cold, contaminated floodwater ponding around her feet. My husband explained that we were there to start ripping out the carpet, the drywall, and hauling out the contaminated furniture. She pleaded with my husband to let it be, insisting it would just go away, it would all be fine. It was in that moment I saw how individuals reacted to a significant, stressful, and emotional event, which I did not fully comprehend, and the destruction or peril to themselves that the event had placed them in.
That experience stayed with me as I carried out my duties as a Regional Engineer for FEMA Region IX. That experience inspired me to be a passionate advocate for reducing flood risk.
As a Regional Engineer, I managed the production of new NFIP maps for Central and Northern California. A big part of my job involved explaining Flood Insurance Rate Maps to the public and why many of them were now going to have to buy flood insurance. To make my presentations as effective as possible, I read countless articles on the social science of risk and risk communication. I also read a number of articles from the Wharton School of Business that explained that NFIP rates were often higher than the true actuarial rates. Most significantly, I came across A Vision for Managing Natural Disaster Risk by the World Economic Forum. [1] This document laid out a very common-sense plan for managing disaster risk as an integrated system by bringing together the insurance, banking, media, and engineering communities to address the complete disaster cycle from awareness to recovery. It is a very different approach to flood risk management than that practiced in the U.S. I began to question why the insurance, banking, media, and engineering communities don’t collaborate more closely on flood risk management, and whether, if they did, we could finance flood risk reduction measures more cost-effectively.
Two years ago, since leaving FEMA, I decided to pursue these questions full-time. After considering a number of options, I decided to pursue this goal through a Ph.D. program at U.C. Davis. For me, it is a perfect fit. The U.C. Davis Watershed Science Center has access to the past twenty years of NFIP claims data. Collaborating with the other researchers at the Science Center, who are also interested in what can be learned from our past experience with the NFIP, will allow me to test assumptions against the history of past claims. The Science Center has a history of working closely with the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) on water issues that impact California. Because of my time with FEMA, I am intimately familiar with the flood-related issues of California, and I have an excellent rapport with DWR staff.
The Central Valley is protected by a labyrinth of levees, many of which do not meet FEMA accreditation. The behind-levee building restrictions imposed by the NFIP present implementation challenges to the agricultural community. Because of my FEMA experience, was asked to participate in an interdisciplinary task force examining FEMA’s institutional barriers to sustainability of agriculture. Pursuing my interest to find a way to more cost-effectively finance flood risk, I extracted NFIP premium and payment data for the Central Valley from the FEMA website.
In 2016, the annual NFIP payment from residents and businesses within the 14 Central Valley counties totaled almost $57.7 million dollars. During the period from 1978 to 2016, the total NFIP payout was $69.2 million. The California Department of Water Resources Flood Futures Report identified a $35 billion flood infrastructure financing shortfall. [2] This preliminary analysis suggests that a Community Choice Flood Risk Financing (CCFRF) program could be more cost-effective than the current NFIP program, allowing more money to be reinvested in levee maintenance and flood mitigation and playing a significant role in meeting the State’s flood financing needs.
The more I explored the question of why it is that we don’t have more involvement by the flood insurance community, I found that one of the biggest hurdles is the way the engineering community models flood risk as opposed to the way the risk financing community insures flood risk. With my experience overseeing modeling and mapping, and leading a Blue Ribbon Team to examine the use of 2-D modeling, I have the perfect combination of experience and interest to explore ways to bridge the gap.
I also have the committed support of a number of researchers at the UC Berkeley Center for Catastrophic Risk Management (CCRM). Located in the Hass School of Business, it focuses on what the social sciences teach us about risk. In particular, they examine what can be learned from High-Reliability Organizations (HROs) and how it can be transferred to the floodplain management community. If communities choose to manage flood risk locally, I believe the lessons learned from examining HROs can provide valuable insight.
Because my Ph.D. will focus on flood risk financing and flood risk policy, I will use my research and training to influence policy. I have a personality type that can be described as a “connector”. I like to bring people together. I can see how pieces fit together and how to nudge them into place. For me, the process of exploring how to improve risk financing is as important and interesting as the final product.