Floodplain restoration offers an opportunity to enhance communities’ resilience to flooding. However, the degree to which these interventions mitigate damages is often unknown, and identifying the best locations for implementation is a challenge. Further, the extent to which the benefits of flood mitigation are equitably distributed within communities is rarely considered in restoration projects. Here, we develop a novel framework to optimize investments in floodplain restoration that maximizes the utility of avoided damages from flood inundation for a range of budgetary constraints. We estimate the expected reduction in flood damages from restoration interventions by integrating a hydraulic flood model and an economic damage cost model. Using equity-weighted utility functions, we explicitly evaluate how the value of reduction in flood damages varies for different property owners. We demonstrate the potential of this approach in the Lewis Creek watershed, located in Vermont, USA. Under all optimal scenarios, the benefits of avoided flood damages over a 100-year time period outweigh the costs of restoration by at least 5-to-1. Floodplain restoration has the potential to reduce the present value of damages by up to $400,000, a 5% decrease from the baseline, at a cost of only $75,000. We also show that the equity-weighted utility of flood mitigation increase when restoration interventions protect the lowest-income property owners, particularly those who live in mobile homes. Together, our results illuminate the importance of evaluating the distribution of benefits and costs associated with alternative restoration strategies, as well as underscore the capacity for floodplain restoration to build resilience to flooding.

洪泛区修复提供了一个增强社区抵御洪水能力的机会。但是，这些干预措施减轻损害的程度通常是未知的，而确定最佳实施位置是一个挑战。此外，在恢复项目中很少考虑减轻洪灾的收益在社区内的平均分配程度。在这里，我们开发了一个新颖的框架来优化洪泛区修复方面的投资，在一系列预算限制下，可以最大限度地避免洪水泛滥造成的损害。我们通过整合水力洪水模型和经济损失成本模型，估计了恢复干预措施带来的预期洪水损失。使用权益加权效用函数，我们明确评估了减少水灾损失的价值对于不同的财产所有者如何变化。我们在位于美国佛蒙特州的Lewis Creek流域证明了这种方法的潜力。在所有最佳方案下，在100年的时间里避免洪灾造成的损失至少要比修复成本高5比1。洪泛区修复有可能将损失的现值降低多达40万美元，比基准降低5％，而成本仅为75,000美元。我们还表明，当恢复干预措施保护收入最低的财产所有人，尤其是居住在活动房屋中的财产所有人时，减轻洪水的公平加权效用就会增加。一起，