8065.1	Assessment
Research Question (Clear, unambiguous)	"[T]his research will assess the obstacles facing impoverished consumers living in areas most vulnerable to extreme weather events, as well as determine the role of government subsidies and insurance in mitigating these consumers’ systemic risk to such events .... better inform insurers and advise “vulnerable” consumers ... on the approximate costs of flood insurance based on an area’s predicted rate of devastation."  Despite the length of this project summary, it is difficult to discover the research question.  At some points, it seems to refer to the prediction of future insurance rates conditional on the probability of an environmental disaster, flooding.  At other points, it has vague and ambiguous language about producing a model of insurance trade-offs in the face of unpredictable future disasters.  Ultimately, it seems to miss the point, which is to have a clear, well-defined research objective.
Relevant Literature	The brief literature review is interesting, but the intent is not obvious.  Yes, both investments to protect against damages from potential future natural events and insuring against such events are controversial issues.  This is an unavoidable consequence of unpredictability, severity, and the complex intersection between public and private costs of such events.  It is not clear where any of this is going.  And the concluding statement, "Still, to calculate a paradigm that more succinctly builds equilibrium between insurers and consumers, all consumer vulnerabilities must be concurrently analyzed in order to predict more accurate insurance rates based on hazard levels; and, the unit of analysis must depict the most productive level of understanding for geospatially-informed statistical analysis" appears to be jargon-laden gibberish.
Causal Interpretations (clear, all parts defined, mechanisms, controls, plausible)	No causal analysis appears.  The discussion of Edgeworth-Bowley Boxes and references to equilibrium have the surface appeal of economic concepts, but have no apparent, realistic goal here.
Data (variables, sample, comparison)	The data listed are all relevant to the study of flooding hazards and insurance rates, but pointing out that lots of different data sources might be useful is not the same as identifying what data will be used and how.
Research Value	With the research so vaguely defined, its value is necessarily unclear.  However, it should be noted that the key relevant decision-making information for people in flood zones is simply how vulnerable they are to flooding, what the likelihood of floods might be, and how much they have to pay for insurance.  Mostly, this is already available (although the likelihood of events is always ill-defined).  This research does not clearly offer anything more.
Overall	As now described, the project seems a problematic combination of high ambition and vague goals.  If it is to go someplace useful, it needs to focus and scale down.