Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Mapping out the risk of flooding

From the NY Times:

Many New Yorkers who are lucky enough to gaze at waves lapping on a beach near their homes pay a price for the view.

Maps provided by the city’s Department of Buildings show that coastal sections of Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn are in “special flood hazard areas.” Practically all of Coney Island, much of the Rockaways, the Long Island Sound-hugging strip of the Country Club neighborhood of the Bronx, and the southeast coast of Staten Island are all edged in the dotted blue that, on the city’s maps, signifies susceptibility to major flooding.

In contrast to its experience in some suburban areas, FEMA had an easy job remapping New York. By 2005, the city had produced digital maps that imposed a fine grid over the city’s topography and supplied, for each box of the grid, the average elevation. FEMA analyzed the data using its own formulas, which account for factors like wave action, rainfall and soil permeability, and came up with a mathematical prediction of the chances of that elevation succumbing to a catastrophic flood. The mapping was declared complete in 2007, and homeowners were notified if they were in the flood plain.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its about time. Now will Vicky and Tony and Gary and Mark and Roger tell you this?

HA!

They think you are too stupid to accept anything but a press release from a developer.

Anonymous said...

Why aren't we building more waterfront residential complexes? Maps? We don't need no stinkin' maps!

panzer65 said...

Better buy those pumps and generators now!

Anonymous said...

This is a slaughter waiting to happen.

ew-3 said...

"This is a slaughter waiting to happen."

The problem with articles like this is that they are designed to elicit a response like yours.

We all live with risks. What we need to know is what are the odds of something like this happening witin the next 100 years?

To give a reference, since the time the Brooklyn Bridge was built, are the towers any further underwater then when it was built? 1883.

Anonymous said...

Not to worry, most of the flooding will be limited to Jerry Seinfelds box at CitiField.

Anonymous said...

People don't live in the footings of the Brooklyn bridge and there have been episodic storms of great instensity since then. Just because the storm waters eventually recede doesn't mean people weren't killed, anymore than the receding of the storm after Hurricane Katrina meant everything was okay.

Please see this article about two famous New York area storms and there have been others not mentioned:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2090959/hurricanes_of_new_york_seeking_shelter.html?cat=37