Report Outline - Project Management at the University Of Maryland

10the lives and social security of people are otherwise adversely affected (49 Stat.1570).This marked the Federal government’s assumption of primary responsibility for dealingwith flood control across the Nation and remains the foundation for today’s flood damagereduction activities. 6 In reaction to the 1936 Act, Federal agencies developed methodologies tosupport the design of flood control structures. In essence, they attempted to define the largeststorms that might occur across the relevant river basins and took the precipitation from thosestorms to define the flood discharge they had to control. These became within different agencies“project floods,” 7 “standard project floods,” and “regional project floods” and generallyrepresented flood events with a recurrence interval in excess of 500 or more years (the 0.2percent flood). Dams and levees were designed so as to provide the desired level of protection.Over the last 40 years, Federal and local governments set the protection level provided bymany new Federal structural projects at or near the 1 percent level rather than at the level of thestandard project flood (Jimenez 1980). In the view of many professionals (Emmer 2005,Galloway 2005), this lowering of the standard has resulted from a combination of• A focus on economic benefit-cost ratios to the exclusion of non-economic factors. 8• A public belief that the 100-year standard of the NFIP represented a safe level ofprotection.• The institution of cost sharing. Early coastal work was deemed beach erosion control andrequired local cost sharing. Beginning in 1986, all flood damage reduction projectsrequired cost sharing, leading local sponsors to seek a minimum level of protection so asto reduce the fiscal impacts on the sponsoring entity.During the 1950s and 1960s there was a growing interest in looking beyond structuralapproaches for reducing flood damages. Spurred by the dissertation and later report of Gilbert F.White, and an effort within the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) by staffer Jim Goddard, the6 Post-1936 flood control legislation required local project sponsors to provide lands, easements, and rights of wayfor flood control projects constructed by the Federal government and to assume responsibility for maintenance andoperation of the projects when completed. It did not change the responsibilities on the Lower Mississippi Valleyestablished by the 1928 Act.7 The Standard Project Flood is derived from “the most severe flood producing rain fall depth-area durationrelationship and isohyetal pattern of any storm that is considered reasonably characteristic of the region in which thedrainage basin is located, giving consideration to the runoff characteristics and existence of water regulationstructures in the basin….The Standard Project Flood is intended as a practicable expression of the degree ofprotection that should be sought as a general rule in the design of flood control works for cities where protection oflife and unusually high-valued property is involved.” (USACE 1965)8 “The “design flood” for a particular protect may be either greater or less than the standard project flood, dependingto an important extent upon economic factors and other practical considerations governing the selection of designcapacity in a specific case. However, selections should not be governed by estimates of average annual benefits of atangible nature alone, nor should construction difficulties that may prove troublesome but not insurmountable beallowed to dictate the design flood selection, particularly when protection of high class urban or agricultural areas isinvolved. Intangible benefits, resulting from a high degree of security against flooding of a disastrous magnitude,including the protection of life, must be considered in addition to tangible benefits that may be estimated inmonetary terms” (USACE 1965).Evaluation of the National Flood Insurance ProgramAssessing the Adequacy of the National Flood Insurance Program's 1 Percent Flood Standard