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A paper, titled "How local governments avoid floodplain development through consistent implementation of routine municipal ordinances, plans, and programs," published in Oxford Open Climate Change uncovers evidence suggesting that, contrary to expectations, most U.S. cities are not doing too badly in avoiding development in areas prone to flooding, and those that are effective appear to be applying existing tools and strategies well, rather than doing anything particularly novel.

Despite billions of dollars of investments and widespread mitigation efforts, the costs of disasters in the United States have grown dramatically. Floods are the most prevalent and expensive U.S. disaster, and while climate change plays a role, the primary reason for rising costs is the concentration of people, infrastructure, and economic activities in hazardous areas.

A 2018 analysis by Climate Central and Zillow found that eight US coastal states are building faster on flood-prone lands than elsewhere.

One of the most effective ways to limit flood damage is to avoid building new infrastructure and housing in flood-prone areas, yet there is little empirical evidence of how effective local governments are at limiting development there and how such governments might improve their efforts.

Numerous studies have researched the contextual factors that lead local jurisdictions to adopt more numerous, advanced, or better-quality floodplain management actions. However, whether more numerous, advanced, and higher-quality actions lead to less floodplain development is less established because few studies have assessed floodplain development outcomes directly.

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