TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hudson, Paul
T1  - The affordability of flood risk property-level adaptation measures
JF  - Risk Analysis
N2  - The affordability of property-level adaptation measures against flooding is crucial due to the movement toward integrated flood risk management, which requires the individuals threatened by flooding to actively manage flooding. It is surprising to find that affordability is not often discussed, given the important roles that affordability and social justice play regarding flood risk management. This article provides a starting point for investigating the potential rate of unaffordability of flood risk property-level adaptation measures across Europe using two definitions of affordability, which are combined with two different affordability thresholds from within flood risk research. It uses concepts of investment and payment affordability, with affordability thresholds based on residual income and expenditure definitions of unaffordability. These concepts, in turn, are linked with social justice through fairness concerns, in that, all should have equal capability to act, of which affordability is one avenue. In doing so, it was found that, for a large proportion of Europe, property owners generally cannot afford to make one-time payment of the cost of protective measures. These can be made affordable with installment payment mechanisms or similar mechanisms that spread costs over time. Therefore, the movement toward greater obligations for flood-prone residents to actively adapt to flooding should be accompanied by socially accessible financing mechanisms.
KW  - Affordability
KW  - flood risk
KW  - social justice
KW  - risk reduction
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13465
SN  - 0272-4332
SN  - 1539-6924
VL  - 40
IS  - 6
SP  - 1151
EP  - 1167
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hudson, Paul
T1  - A comparison of definitions of affordability for flood risk adaption measures
BT  - a case study of current and future risk-based flood insurance premiums in Europe
JF  - Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change : an international journal devoted to scientific, engineering, socio-economic and policy responses to environmental change
N2  - Risk-based insurance is a commonly proposed and discussed flood risk adaptation mechanism in policy debates across the world such as in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. However, both risk-based premiums and growing risk pose increasing difficulties for insurance to remain affordable. An empirical concept of affordability is required as the affordability of adaption strategies is an important concern for policymakers, yet such a concept is not often examined. Therefore, a robust metric with a commonly acceptable affordability threshold is required. A robust metric allows for a previously normative concept to be quantified in monetary terms, and in this way, the metric is rendered more suitable for integration into public policy debates. This paper investigates the degree to which risk-based flood insurance premiums are unaffordable in Europe. In addition, this paper compares the outcomes generated by three different definitions of unaffordability in order to investigate the most robust definition. In doing so, the residual income definition was found to be the least sensitive to changes in the threshold. While this paper focuses on Europe, the selected definition can be employed elsewhere in the world and across adaption measures in order to develop a common metric for indicating the potential unaffordability problem.
KW  - Flood risk
KW  - Insurance
KW  - Affordability
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Adaptation
KW  - Public policy
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-017-9769-5
SN  - 1381-2386
SN  - 1573-1596
VL  - 23
IS  - 7
SP  - 1019
EP  - 1038
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  -