HEvOD: A database of hurricane evacuation orders in the United States.

Assessing and improving the effectiveness of evacuation orders is critical to improving hurricane emergency response, particularly as the frequency of hurricanes increases in the United States. However, our understanding of causal relationships between evacuation orders and evacuation decision-making is still limited, in large part due to the lack of standardized, high-temporal-resolution data on historical evacuation orders. To overcome this gap, we developed the Hurricane Evacuation Order Database (HEvOD) - a comprehensive database of hurricane evacuation orders issued in the United States between 2014 and 2022. The database features evacuation orders that were systematically retrieved and compiled from a wide range of resources and includes information on order type, announcement time, effective time, and evacuation area. The rich collection of attributes and the resolution of the data in the database will allow researchers to systematically investigate the impact of evacuation orders, as a vital public policy instrument, and can serve as an important resource to identify gaps in current policies, leading to more effective policy design in response to hurricanes.

A reproducible and streamlined approach to geospatial modelling for the Community Rating System.

Building flood resilience has become a priority in the United States as flood risks continue to rise. The National Flood Insurance Program's Community Rating System (CRS) serves as an excellent framework for local-level resilience planning by incentivizing a wide range of flood management practices. Despite the short-term and long-term benefits, resource barriers and limited technical capacity constrain communities' ability to participate in the program. In this study, we develop a GIS-based decision support tool to facilitate communities' participation in CRS. Specifically, we focus on Open Space Preservation (OSP) in the floodplain, a high credit earning CRS activity that is also promising in terms of flood protection. Most communities already preserve lands in the floodplain, indicating a missed opportunity for policyholders across the United States to receive financial benefit. Furthermore, OSP aligns with a growing national interest in the use of natural infrastructure for flood protection. Implementing OSP, however, requires extensive GIS analysis. Many communities lack the technical capacity needed to fulfill the program requirements. To address this challenge, the tool identifies areas that are already preserved and calculates credit estimates, providing communities with an indication of the financial benefit they are eligible to receive. In addition, the tool implements a novel methodology for mapping unprotected open space areas in the floodplain that could be eligible for CRS credit if preserved. These maps, along with estimates of future crediting scenarios, help communities pursue additional OSP credits through flood resilient land-use planning. The tool was applied to communities in the Commonwealth of Virginia as a case study. Statewide, over 39,000 unclaimed OSP credits were identified, suggesting an opportunity for significant expansion of the CRS in Virginia. Across the country, communities can use the GIS tool to perform the necessary GIS work more quickly and easily, engage with stakeholders, and make a strong financial argument for proactive flood management practices.

Managing basin-wide ecosystem services using the bankruptcy theory.

Bankrupt ecosystems are those that cannot appropriately provide all their ecosystem services. In this paper, a novel bankruptcy-based methodology is developed to manage ecosystem services. To test the applicability of the developed methodology, it is used in the Zarrinehrud river basin in Iran. First, an integrated framework is used to assess regulating, supporting, provisioning, and cultural ecosystem services of the study area under three climate change scenarios of Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5. Then, for each ecosystem service, an aggregated utility is calculated that takes into account the stakeholders' different opinions toward ecosystem services. The utilities of the ecosystem services show that the Zarrinehrud river basin is bankrupt. To manage this ecosystem, six bankruptcy methods of Adjusted Proportional, Constrained Equal Loss, Constrained Equal Award, Piniles, Talmud, and Hybrid are developed and used in the study area. In this study, the summation of ecosystem services' aggregated utilities under each management scenario is considered as an asset, and all mentioned bankruptcy methods are used to redistribute these assets to different ecosystem services. Considering aggregated utilities, redistributed utilities, and each ecosystem service's claim, two different Root Mean Square Error-based approaches are developed to find the most applicable management scenario in a bankruptcy condition. Using the mentioned approaches, management scenario 128, which is comprised of all management packages, is chosen as the best option under all climate change scenarios. This scenario includes projects such as improving cropping patterns, allocating water to the lake from new water resources, and rehabilitating irrigation and draining systems. Moreover, analyzing the results derived from different bankruptcy methods shows that the Talmud, Hybrid, and Constrained Equal Loss methods have the best performance.

Reducing Food Loss and Waste to Enhance Food Security and Environmental Sustainability.

While food shortage remains a big concern in many regions around the world, almost one-third of the total food production is discarded as food loss and waste (FLW). This is associated with about one-quarter of land, water, and fertilizer used for crop production, even though resources and environmental constraints are expected to limit food production around the world. FLW reduction represents a potential opportunity to enhance both food security and environmental sustainability and therefore has received considerable attention recently. By reviewing the recent progress and new developments in the literature, this paper highlights the importance of FLW prevention as a complementary solution to address the Grand Challenge of global food security and environmental sustainability. However, raising awareness only is not enough to realize the expected FLW reduction. We identify the knowledge gaps and opportunities for research by synthesizing the strategies of FLW reduction and the barriers, including (1) filling the data gaps, (2) quantifying the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of FLW reduction strategies, (3) understanding the scale effects, and (4) exploring the impacts of global transitions. It is urgent to take more aggressive yet scientifically based actions to reduce FLW, which require everyone's involvement along the food supply chain, including policy makers, food producers and suppliers, and food consumers.