Blog: Model simulates urban flood risk with an eye to equity
Rising seas and extreme storms fueled by climate change are combining to generate more frequent and severe floods in cities along rivers and coasts, and aging infrastructure is poorly equipped for the new reality. But when governments and planners try to prepare communities for worsening flood risks by improving infrastructure, the benefits are often unfairly distributed. A new modeling approach from Stanford University and University of Florida researchers offers a solution: an easy way for planners to simulate future flood risks at the neighborhood level under conditions expected to become commonplace with climate change, such as extreme rainstorms that coincide with high tides elevated by rising sea levels. The approach, described May 28 in Environmental Research Letters, reveals places where elevated risk is invisible with conventional modeling methods designed to assess future risks based on data from a single past flood event.
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