INPUT-OUTPUT ECONOMIC-EVALUATION OF SYSTEM OF LEVEES

Recent large-scale flooding in northern California and the scale of th e 1993 flood of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers have demonstrated that floodplain management should be conducted for regions, rather tha n only for individual floodplains. Economic activities connect each fl oodplain to other floodplains and to areas not affected by flooding. A method is presented to estimate the economic effects of flooding over a region of interacting floodplains and other lands by incorporating a Leontief economic input-output model with a probabilistic descriptio n of the potential overtopping in a system of levees. Expected economi c damages may be greater if flooding reduces the availability of flood plain products that are used as inputs to other sectors of the economy . The model is used to evaluate the hood risk for an example of a dist ributed system of levees.