“Flood Factor” Shows Where Critical Flood Zones Are in the U.S.

A new app has been made to show where critical flood zones are in the U.S.

The company First Street Foundation created Flood Factor. It has released flood risk data for more than 142 million homes and properties throughout the U.S.

A press release explains that the data, “based on decades of peer-reviewed research, assigns every property in the contiguous United States a ‘Flood Factor™,' or score from 1 to 10, based on its cumulative risk of flooding over a thirty-year mortgage.”

“People can look up a property’s Flood Factor and learn more about its past, present, and future flood risk at FloodFactor.com,” the press release added. They describe it as the Foundation’s new online visualization tool.”

According to the app, around 14.6 million properties remain at risk of being damaged in a flood. However, the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimated 8.7 million properties are at risk.

“This discrepancy exists because the Foundation uses current climate data, maps precipitation as a stand-alone risk, and includes areas that FEMA has not mapped,” the company explains.

“In environmental engineering, there is a concept called stationarity, which assumes that today is going to be like yesterday, and tomorrow is going to be like yesterday,” said First Street Foundation's chief data office Ed Kearns. “This concept used to work, but with a changing environment, it's a poor assumption and no longer does. FEMA's method assumes stationarity, First Street's does not,” Kearns then added.

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