The burgeoning development of coastal cities coupled with increasing exposure to sea level rise and extreme weather events has exacerbated the vulnerability of coastal communities and infrastructure to floods. In order to make good flood risk reduction and resilience decisions, cities are interested in gaining better insights into what are perceived to be the “real” risks of floods. However, what counts as a good estimate of such risks is constructed through the design of a knowledge system that ratifies certain ideas and methods over others. We refer to knowledge systems as the organizational practices and routines that produce, validate and review, communicate, and use knowledge relevant to policy and decision-making. In this chapter, we conduct a knowledge system analysis of FEMA’s Flood Insurance Rate Maps in New York City. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy exposed in the national spotlight the shortcomings of how we calculate, map, and use knowledge about flood risk. Through this case study, we hope to demonstrate the value of knowledge systems analysis as a method to stress-test and identify the weaknesses of a knowledge system that warrant attention, as well as to inform potential methods ofupgrading or redesigning that system in support of building resilient cities.

The challenge of ensuring that urban resilience agendas do not compromise sustainability and equity goals demands that our cities be capable of envisioning future pathways and anticipating trade-offs of resilience strategies and solutions. While future-thinking is a common practice in urban planning, cities will need to get more ambitious about how they factor in foresight and unintended consequences of actions at very distant temporal scales into the knowledge systems that underpin their planning and decision-making. We ask, to what extent is the knowledge coming to bear on urban resilience planning and strategies inclusive of sustainability and equity goals? What kinds of upgrades or innovations are needed to make city knowledge systems more anticipatory? We draw upon the knowledge-action systems analysis (KASA) currently implemented in multiple US and Latin America cities to explore the types and networks of knowledge shaping urban resilience in different context and how conducive they are to moving beyond risk-based knowledge systems to enhancing anticipatory capacities for cities.