{"id":208341,"date":"2026-04-24T13:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208341\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T13:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:52:09","slug":"new-study-finds-alarming-high-flood-risk-for-17-million-americans-on-atlantic-and-gulf-coasts-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208341\/","title":{"rendered":"New study finds \u2018alarming\u2019 high flood risk for 17 million Americans on Atlantic and Gulf coasts \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Hurricane<\/a><\/p>\n

AP Photo\/Maria Lysaker, File<\/p>\n

A vehicle is stranded in high waters on a flooded highway at Interstate 10 and Washington in Houston, July 8, 2024, after Hurricane Beryl came ashore.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 More than 17 million people along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts are at the highest risk of being affected by flooding, with New York and New Orleans standing out, according to one of the most comprehensive studies ever of flood risk.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Alabama used 16 different factors including the geographic hazards, the population and infrastructure exposed and the vulnerability of people living there. They then brought in past damages from the Federal Emergency Management Agency\u2019s database and applied three different artificial intelligence tools to figure out flood risks from Texas to Maine, calculating that 17.5 million people were at “very high” risk and an additional 17 million were at “high\u201d risk, the next level.<\/p>\n

The authors looked at all sizes of flooding and examined separately what FEMA considers the most extreme, which are the top 1% of events. The study found 4.3 million people along the coasts to be at the highest level of risk of extreme flooding, but 20.5 million to be at high risk, the second highest level.<\/p>\n

They found a lot of vulnerability, highlighting eight different cities from Houston, which flooded in 2017’s Hurricane Harvey<\/a>, to New York, which was inundated in 2012’s Superstorm Sandy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Judge rules federal operator caused excessive damage to downstream homeowners after Hurricane Harvey<\/a><\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s study in the journal Science Advances<\/a> found that New York City has 4.75 million people at the two highest risk levels for all flooding, with more than 200,000 buildings likely to be damaged.<\/p>\n

And while the number of people at risk in New Orleans is far lower, about 380,000, it involves 99% of the city\u2019s population. That doesn\u2019t mean 99% of the people will be affected in the next hurricane or nontropical flood, but that they might be depending on the storm\u2019s individual path and rain pattern, said study co-author Wanyun Shao, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama.<\/p>\n

“Just look at the magnitude,” Shao said. “Those numbers are shocking, are alarming.”<\/p>\n

The elderly and poor are most at risk<\/p>\n

“When the next big storm hits New York City, when the next Hurricane Katrina<\/a>-like hurricane makes landfall in New Orleans, people will get hurt, especially those socially vulnerable populations,” Shao said referring to the poor, the elderly, children and the uneducated.<\/p>\n

RELATED: After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans evacuees changed Houston \u2014 and Houston changed them<\/a><\/p>\n

Shao and outside experts said the numbers stunned them even though they were familiar with the worsening effects of climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“New York is known to be susceptible to floods and it has the largest population. But the fact that New York has nearly an order of magnitude more flood-exposed population than any other city is surprising,” said Alex de Sherbinin, a geographer who directs Columbia University’s Center for Integrated Earth System Information. He wasn’t part of the study.<\/p>\n

Flood problems are becoming more frequent in New York and New Orleans because of human-caused climate change, the study said.<\/p>\n

Other cities are also threatened<\/p>\n

Jacksonville has 679,000 people at high or very high risk of flooding, while Houston is just behind at just under 600,000. Other cities highlighted include Miami, Norfolk, Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina, Mobile, Alabama.<\/p>\n

Shao and outside experts said what separates her study from others is the sheer comprehensiveness of all the factors it considers, including sinking land and pavement that doesn\u2019t allow water to seep into the ground, as well as incorporating human social vulnerability such as poverty and age.<\/p>\n

“This could be applied to other places in the world, such as Manila,” said University of Virginia engineering professor Venkataraman Lakshmi, who heads the hydrology section of the American Geophysical Union, referring to the capital of the Philippines. He wasn\u2019t part of the study, but said the flooding problems it highlights will get more frequent and intense due to human-caused climate change.<\/p>\n

Columbia University\u2019s Marco Tedesco, who wasn\u2019t part of the study, said \u201cit reinforces the crucial concept that future flood disasters are not just about water \u2014 they are about where people live, how cities are built, and who is least protected.”<\/p>\n

Actions can lessen the risk<\/p>\n

De Sherbinin said, \u201cthe analysis of the flood risk factors is important for local planners, emergency managers, and even highway crews and utility providers. We all know that low lying areas are more flood prone, but the data they have assembled provide more insights into flood risk, particularly for flash floods.”<\/p>\n

Study lead author Hemal Dey, a geospatial scientist, said he hopes local officials look at not just building more dams and levees, but more natural infrastructure such as wetlands, grasslands, rain gardens and estuaries.<\/p>\n

“The research is solid confirmation of what emergency managers have been saying for years. Realtors will hate it,\u201d said Craig Fugate, a former FEMA director who wasn\u2019t part of the study. \u201cThe harder question is what we’re actually going to do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AP Photo\/Maria Lysaker, File A vehicle is stranded in high waters on a flooded highway at Interstate 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3242,5025,82643,14236,9422,610,531,3686,9,11,10,12,1777],"class_list":{"0":"post-208341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-fema","10":"tag-flood-risk","11":"tag-flooding","12":"tag-houston","13":"tag-local","14":"tag-national","15":"tag-new-orleans","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-headlines","18":"tag-new-york-news","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}