Full Title: The 3rd National Risk Assessment: Infrastructure on the Brink
Author(s): First Street Foundation
Publisher(s): First Street Foundation
Publication Date: October 12, 2021
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Changing environmental conditions are driving worsening flood events, with consequences for counties, cities, towns, and local communities. Individuals whose homes were spared the impact of a particular flood event are increasingly likely to find their local roads, businesses, critical infrastructure, utilities, or emergency services affected by flooding, indirectly threatening their quality of life, safety, and wellbeing. A truly comprehensive understanding of individual flood risk from a changing climate must therefore consider the resiliency of local communities to flood, and determine the extent to which physical and soft infrastructure are at risk.
This report will provide the first ever nation-wide understanding of community vulnerability to flooding, taking into account the impact of a changing climate over the next 30 years. It will add the critical new dimension of proximity to flooding to personal evaluations of flood risk, providing an expanded understanding of risk based on the impact of flooding to the broader environment surrounding a home. This report accesses risk to: (1) residential properties; (2) roads; (3) commercial properties; (4) critical infrastructure (airports, fire stations, hospitals, police stations, ports, power stations, superfund/hazardous waste sites, water outfalls, and wastewater treatment facilities); and (5) social infrastructure (government buildings, historic buildings, houses of worship, museums, and
schools). Risk in this report is quantified as the unique level of flooding for each infrastructure type relative to operational thresholds, as established by the federal government and other authoritative bodies.