Wake-up Call in East Tennessee? Correlating Flood Losses to National Flood Insurance Program Enrollment (1978–2006)

• Published in: Southeastern geographer Vol. 50; no. 3; pp. 305 - 322
• Main Author: LUFFMAN, INGRID E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chapel Hill Journal of the Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers 22.09.2010; The University of North Carolina Press; University of North Carolina Press
• Subjects: Analysis; Communities; Community; Compliance; Disaster relief; Disasters; Economic aspects; Flood damage; Flood hazards; Flood insurance; Floods; Homeowners; Homeowners insurance; Household size; Insurance claims; Levees & battures; Market penetration; Population estimates; Population size; Regulation of financial institutions; Statistics; Tennessee; Tennessee
• ISSN: 0038-366X; 1549-6929
• DOI: 10.1353/sgo.2010.0000

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).