Louisiana developed its 2012 Coastal Master Plan to guide the state's coastal investments and help its coastal citizens plan for the future. The projects in the plan strike a balance between providing immediate relief to hard hit areas and laying groundwork for the large-scale efforts that are needed to protect communities and sustain Louisiana's landscape.
RAND played a prominent role in supporting the development of the State's plan through the development of two models: a new hurricane flood risk model to assess effects of projects designed to reduce damage from flooding; and a planning framework and decision support model, called the Planning Tool, to develop and compare different coast-wide groupings of risk reduction and restoration (land-building) projects.
As the website of Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) says, CPRA built "world class science and engineering expertise into our decisions, so we could focus our resources wisely."
The Louisiana legislature unanimously approved the Master Plan on May 22, 2012, after several months of public comment and review. The plan's technical appendices, including RAND's contributions (Appendix D25 and Appendix E), are available on the Louisiana website. A presentation given by Policy Researcher David Groves to the 2012 State of the Coast conference, "Applying a Planning Tool for the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan," is also available.
RAND has been conducting research on coastal restoration and water management since the 1980s. Some of the work we have done is featured below.
Describes how nonstructural measures -- such as incentives for home elevation, incentives for relocation to lower-risk areas, and restrictions on the use of floodplain land -- can make New Orleans less vulnerable to storm surge.
Considers proposals to augment the existing flood-damage protection system in New Orleans with ''nonstructural'' risk mitigation programs focused on single-family homes.
Reports the experiences from four major floods since 1948 to draw lessons for the Gulf coast restoration effort.
This report examines the consequences of alternative policies for providing flood protection to the non-tidal branches of the Rijn and the Maas rivers in the Netherlands.
This paper describes a portion of a study performed for the Dutch Minister of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management that examined the consequences of alternative policies for providing flood protection to the non-tidal branches of the Rijn an...
Summarizes the PAWN project, documented in RAND Notes N-1500/2 to N-1500/20, which designed alternative water management policies for the Netherlands and assessed their consequences.
