Sustainability, resilience, and climate change are top of mind for planners and floodplain managers. For subdivision design, those ideas haven't hit home. The results? Catastrophic flood damage in communities across the country. This PAS Report is out to end the cycle of build-damage-rebuild and bring subdivision design into line with the best of floodplain planning. Readers will get the tools they need to save lives, protect property, and lay the foundation for a better future.

Economic, political, and market pressures make some development on floodplains inevitable. But appropriate subdivision designs can minimize risks of flood damage--or eliminate them entirely. This report explores the full range of planning techniques to minimize possible problems in a flood-hazard area. Cluster development, coast-to-road lots, and elevated buildings are all suggested as techniques that will minimize flood damage. Detailed diagrams illustrate the natural functions of a floodplain and describe the tools used to preserve these functions and protect properties from flooding. Photographs show planners both good and bad planning techniques. Includes appendices with selected ordinances and policies.

This manual is for designers, developers, builders, and others who wish to build elevated residential structures in flood-prone areas prudently. Contents: Environmental and Regulatory Factors Site Analysis and Design Architectural Design Examples Design and Construction Guidelines Cost Analysis Resource Materials

Alluvial fans are gently sloping, fan-shaped landforms common at the base of mountain ranges in arid and semiarid regions such as the American West. Floods on alluvial fans, although characterized by relatively shallow depths, strike with little if any warning, can travel at extremely high velocities, and can carry a tremendous amount of sediment and debris. Such flooding presents unique problems to federal and state planners in terms of quantifying flood hazards, predicting the magnitude at which those hazards can be expected at a particular location, and devising reliable mitigation strategies. Alluvial Fan Flooding attempts to improve our capability to determine whether areas are subject to alluvial fan flooding and provides a practical perspective on how to make such a determination. The book presents criteria for determining whether an area is subject to flooding and provides examples of applying the definition and criteria to real situations in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, and elsewhere. The volume also contains recommendations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is primarily responsible for floodplain mapping, and for state and local decisionmakers involved in flood hazard reduction.

Prepared by the Interagency Task Force on Floodplain Management. Includes National Flood Insurance Program.