VAMLIS Mission The Virginia Association for Mapping and Land Information Systems is a professional association in Virginia designed to provide educational and networking opportunities for professionals who have an interest in the mapping sciences in Virginia.
Notes: This report was made possible with financial assistance from the Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency (CCRFR). The author would like to acknowledge Matthew Simons from the City of Norfolk and William Bradfield from FEMA Region III for providing access to the data used for this analysis.
Abstract: With an increase and intensification of tropical storm events into the future, it becomes paramount for individual communities and homeowners to understand their potential risks of impacts from these events. This study describes an empirical modeling methodology using the City of Norfolk in southeastern Virginia to indicate areas of higher risk based on built infrastructure, property exposure, and temporal records of previous losses. Under this new empirical modeling methodology, a risk score is defined as the properties that may be at higher risk from future flooding events based on elevation differences, the number of flood insurance payouts a property has received, and whether a property has an active flood insurance policy. Results make evident how the methodology can be used to characterize a community’s risk and highlight higher risk hotspots that can in turn be used for future resilience planning and hazard mitigation. Future work to refine the model can reduce the overall uncertainty levels as data becomes more publicly accessible.
