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Simulating Impacts of Ice Storms on Forest Ecosystems

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Risky Development: Increasing Exposure to Natural Hazards in the United States.

Virginia Iglesias¹, Anna E Braswell¹, Matthew W Rossi¹

¹Earth Lab Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) University of Colorado Boulder CO USA.

|August 26, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Development is rapidly increasing in natural hazard hotspots across the United States, leading to escalating disaster losses. Over half of all structures are in these vulnerable zones, with many in areas prone to multiple hazards.

Keywords:

Zillow exposure natural hazards risk vulnerability

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Area of Science:

Environmental Science
Urban Planning
Disaster Risk Reduction

Background:

Natural hazard losses are escalating due to increased exposure of properties and critical infrastructure.
Development patterns, rather than solely hazard changes, are driving this unsustainable trend.
Disasters occur when natural hazards intersect with vulnerable assets and populations.

Purpose of the Study:

To diagnose development patterns contributing to increased exposure in natural hazard hotspots in the conterminous United States (CONUS).
To quantify the extent of structural development within identified hazard zones.

Main Methods:

Identified earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado, and wildfire hazard hotspots across CONUS.
Overlaid hazard hotspot data with land use information from the Historical Settlement Data Compilation dataset.
Analyzed the percentage of structures located within hazard hotspots and multi-hazard zones.

Main Results:

57% of structures are located in hazard hotspots, which constitute only one-third of the CONUS area.
Approximately 1.5 million buildings are situated in areas exposed to two or more natural hazards.
Development in hazardous areas continues to grow faster than the national baseline rate.

Conclusions:

High levels of structural exposure in hazardous zones are a legacy of sustained development.
There is a critical failure to limit development in hazardous areas, indicating issues with knowledge or willingness.
Continued rapid development in these zones portends escalating future losses, independent of climate change impacts.