Abstract Submission: The unequal development of stormwater infrastructure across the United States often disproportionately affects low-income households and communities of color, exacerbating the impacts of hydrologic disasters. As global temperatures rise, climate change is expected to intensify these disparities through more frequent extreme weather, severe flooding, and limited community resilience. Flood management strategies traditionally focus on single-objective optimization – minimizing economic losses – limiting the explicit consideration of other social and physical factors in decision-making aimed at promoting more equitable resource management outcomes. We construct a highly localized flood-specific social vulnerability index, based on various physical, health, environmental, and socioeconomic factors using census data. By exploring various weighting schemes, we develop an understanding of factor importance and variation across neighborhoods and socio-economic conditions. Additionally, we leverage locally conducted surveys and interviews elucidating perceptions on current flood impacts and management strategies to further our understanding of how well residential perceptions confirm or misalign with indexes constructed on census data. Quantitative survey results are subsequently applied as weights to various social vulnerability index factors. Our findings highlight the benefits of integrating local perceptions into social vulnerability measures, contextualize heterogeneity across neighborhoods, and serve as motivation for considering equitable infrastructure redevelopment.
