Brooklyn nonprofit maps the risk of wildfires and flooding
NEW YORK - A Brooklyn nonprofit based in DUMBO is mapping the risk of floods and wildfires nationwide.
First Street Foundation was founded five years ago with the goal to keep homeowners informed of the weather-related risks that exist in their area.
Aside from Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, the whole country is calculated using publicly available data.
"Things like NASA, or NOAA, or USGS, all of these are multi-billion dollar budgets that bring to light the type of data you need to be able to do this," says CEO Matthew Eby.
Eby says their calculations take into account things like topography, the types of trees in the forest, wind patterns, and many other factors, including individual land plots.
You can search for your address, zip code, or county on their website, but you can also find this information on websites like Realtor, Redfin, and other real estate portals they've partnered with. And their findings go beyond the data that the government compiles.
"We saw that there were actually about 8 million additional homes across the country that were identified with that level of risk that weren't identified before from FEMA and their base level flood maps that talk about a one-in-a-hundred flood zone," Eby says.
First Street Foundation plans to launch its next risk factor, an extreme heat index, later this summer.
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