Floodbase launches National Flood Response Data Product

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Jul 15, 2024, 09:02 ET

Offering designed to improve relief and recovery efforts across the continental United States

BROOKLYN, N.Y., July 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Floodbase announced today the launch of a rapid flood response data product covering flood events in the continental U.S. The service will provide a near-real time flood hazard layer to government agencies and corporations who conduct damage assessments or visualize impacts to critical assets or populations. This data will enable enhanced rapid response and recovery operations, and improve the insurance claims estimation processes.

Floodbase captures hourly and peak flood extent by leveraging machine learning to fuse data from public satellites, stream gauges, and hydrological models.

Flooding is the most common and costly weather-related disaster in the United States. A recent Senate report estimated that flooding costs the U.S. between $180 and $496 billion each year.

In 2023 Floodbase was selected through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate's (S&T) Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) to strengthen the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) flood analytics capabilities. The company will now make these capabilities available to customers by providing access to critical flood event analytics that capture hourly and peak flood extent by leveraging machine learning to fuse data from public satellites, stream gauges, and hydrological models.

The result is a continuous map of flood severity, allowing Floodbase to capture peak flooding at the county and census tract level. Users can then display the dataset over existing GIS map data layers such as infrastructure, policyholders, or a social vulnerability index, thereby making relief and recovery efforts more efficient.

Beginning on August 1st, this near-real time flood data will be available to government and commercial customers such as state and local emergency management agencies, insurance data platforms, nonprofits, and large corporations with national emergency operations centers. Interested parties can now register for the flood data response product waitlist at floodbase.com/flood-response.

Floodbase will make the data it produces for federal agencies such as FEMA available for purchase to commercial and governmental customers through the end of the North Atlantic hurricane season (November 30th) each time that the federal government submits a data request within the continental U.S. to Floodbase.

The data can be used to analyze flooding caused by major, predicted events such as Hurricane Harvey. It is particularly useful for unexpected pluvial and fluvial flood events such as the recent floods in Iowa, during which 11 inches of rain fell on Rock Rapids in just a few hours, causing rivers to overflow their banks.

"Our mission is to enable all communities to prepare for and respond to climate disasters by reducing the barriers to scientific information and capital," said Bessie Schwarz, Floodbase CEO. "By making this data more broadly available, communities will be better prepared, and better equipped to deploy resources to recover efficiently, and equitably from flood events."

In order to support rapid relief and recovery efforts, Floodbase will send daily spatial data updates on the location, extent, and severity of select floods, which can cover municipalities, counties, states, or regions depending on the size of the event and scope of the initial request from the federal government. Once the flood recedes, Floodbase will deliver daily flood extent data for the duration of the flood event - including the point of maximum flooding within the area of interest.

"Regardless of the flood event type, we will begin delivering data to customers within 1-2 days of the federal request being initiated with Floodbase. This will enable near-real time situational awareness of flood events so that state and local governments, and businesses can respond in a way that minimizes risk and protects vulnerable populations," said Emmalina Glinskis, Floodbase Head of Public Sector Partnerships.

About Floodbase
Floodbase — a data provider and reporting agent — partners with re/insurers and humanitarian organizations to profitably design, underwrite, and monitor parametric flood insurance products. Built on nearly a decade of groundbreaking science, our proprietary solution continuously monitors flooding worldwide. Pairing decades of historical flood data with near real-time monitoring makes it possible to cover large corporate and public sector clients against previously uninsurable economic loss from flooding.

Contact our team of experts at [email protected] to partner on parametric flood insurance solutions that help close the flood insurance gap.

SOURCE Floodbase