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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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October/November
2007
Volume 13 - Number
1/2 |
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Flooding Trends Over the Last 3 Decades By: Sarah Maloney "Over the past 50 years, flooding cost an average
of 100 lives and almost $4 billion in damages per year in the United States—more
than any other severe weather-related event," said John Jones, deputy director
of NOAA's National Weather Service
There is no central agency with the responsibility for compiling complete flood loss data and estimates. The National Weather Service’s Hydrologic Information Center provides approximations of historical flooding data. While the cost of flooding fluctuates there is an overall upward trend. According to the Natural Hazard Center in Colorado, the economic impact or cost of flooding is steadily increasing at a rate of 1.17% annually. The two costliest years on record in the last three decades were 1993 and 2005. Does this increase in cost indicate an increase in flooding events or just the size of the flooding event? The answer according to NOAA data is both. In the last 30 years there have been more frequent small flooding events interspersed with extreme events such as the Midwest Floods in 1993 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 1993 the cost of flooding was nearly $10 billion dollars (adjusted for inflation) more than any year until 2005. The data for 2005 is estimated to be double that of 1993 coming in at over $40 billion dollars. Researchers are working on linking the increase in severe weather such as flooding with global warming. The implications of this are enormous; we must prepare ourselves. www.noaa.gov http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/ http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/billionz.html |