2026 Theses Doctoral

Rethinking Climate Risk for Flood Insurance: Learning the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Hydroclimatic Extremes

Nayak, Adam

The growing instability of U.S. insurance markets, evident in the NFIP’s over $20 billion debt and the withdrawal of private insurers from high-risk states, reflects a deeper failure in natural disaster risk quantification. Current catastrophe modeling frameworks, though advanced in spatial resolution and multi-hazard representation, often miss a key reality: hydroclimatic extremes are not independent or isolated, but emerge as spatiotemporally clustered phenomena shaped by ocean-atmosphere variability and climate change.

This dissertation develops new methods to assess, project, and manage flood risks that account for these dynamic space-time interactions. First, we analyze historical flood damage and NFIP debt, identifying the role of clustered extremes in driving financial losses. Next, we simulate nonstationary, climate-conditioned flood scenarios to forecast portfolio-level exposure under future extremes. Finally, we explore redesign strategies for the NFIP and reinsurance under clustered flooding and pressures of decentralization. By rethinking flood risk as a coupled human–climate system, this work aims to inform more resilient insurance portfolios in an era of compounding disaster risk.