Urban Flood Resilience Networks: Exploring the Relationship between Governance Networks, Networks of Plans, and Spatial Flood Resilience Policies in Four Coastal Cities

Coastal cities facing growing flood risks are increasingly focused on resilience. Academic and policy discourse present a resilience-based approach to governing hazards as more collaborative, better connecting threats, systems, and actors. Literature on governance networks, collaborative governance, and networks of plans suggests collaboration enhances resilience, but empirical studies of the relationship between governance networks, networks of plans, and resilience policies are limited. This study addresses this gap by examining collaboration patterns and plans in the context of flood resilience in four U.S. cities (Fort Lauderdale, Baltimore, Boston, and Seattle). We use surveys and social network analysis to assess collaboration within the cities’ flood governance networks. We analyze cities’ networks of plans using three approaches: (1) plan quality evaluation, (2) plan cross-referencing, and (3) the spatial distribution and flood resilience impact of policies. We find that higher quality plans and those that integrate flood information are more likely to have policies reducing flood risk. Plans that are more connected to other plans also have higher plan quality scores and more flood information. At the city level, the relationship between collaboration across the governance networks and networks of plans appears more complex and requires additional research.