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New Interactive Map For Understanding Global Flood Risks

Posted by timothy on from the seek-out-higher-ground dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Using computations on the massive near-global SRTM surface model from NASA, this map lets you query watersheds, interactively set the sea-level and flood the world (North America at 500m increase in sea-level), or play around with river thresholds on a global or regional scale (computed rivers around NYC/NJ). It can be used to get an understanding of the watersheds and water flow paths in your local neighborhood; do you know where rain (or pollutants) that falls in your backyard end up? The map is freely available to the public."

8 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. If you're going to go to all that trouble... by dohzer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why not go the whole hog and allow for a FALL in sea-level by enabling negative values? Surely we have the necessary sea-floor maps and people who think climate change is running the other way.

    1. Re:If you're going to go to all that trouble... by SeeSchloss · · Score: 3, Informative

      The sea-floor elevation maps are vastly less precise (because you can't just use a radar from satellite to measure sea-floor).

    2. Re:If you're going to go to all that trouble... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why not go the whole hog and allow for a FALL in sea-level by enabling negative values? Surely we have the necessary sea-floor maps and people who think climate change is running the other way.

      Well, that would actually make more sense than the 500m that the link points to. If all ice in both the south pole and Greenland melts the sea-level will rise with about 80m. To get above 100m we will need to import water from another planet.
      The range that would be of interest would be somewhere between -100 to 100m for showing everything from a new ice age to an ice-free planet.
      I guess even lower than -100m is still theoretically possible. 500m is just retarded scaremongering that undermines their credibility.

  2. Netherlands already flooded, call 911 by Njovich · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So according to the map, Netherlands is already completely flooded with just millimetres of sea level rise. Somehow I think they forgot some factors.

    1. Re:Netherlands already flooded, call 911 by Alsn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The map does not seem to take into account artificial means of holding back the ocean(dikes, for example). The Netherlands are in fact below sea level(about 25% of it according to wikipedia) so in that context, the map makes perfect sense.

  3. Re:There is an interactive sea-level map from NASA by rickyslashdot · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://climate.nasa.gov/intera... found here http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multim... along with other goodies or you could spend time going thru http://nasasearch.nasa.gov/sea...

    --
    redneck geek
  4. Balderdash! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If we start taking this sort of alarmist garbage seriously, my beachfront condo might get reassigned into a higher-risk flood zone, potentially increasing my insurance payments to something vaguely resembling actual cost! Then, if it should happen to flood for a third time this decade, I'll have to make do with less taxpayer money to rebuild it. How is that fair?

    (In case it wasn't abundantly obvious, I don't actually espouse that point of view; but there's a reason why flood-estimate maps are Big Political Business at least in the US: because stuff getting flooded happens approximately all the time, we have the 'National Flood Insurance Program'. Your level of estimated risk governs your premiums; but not your payout in the event of an incident, so people are even less happy than usual to hear from Mr. Pessimism, when it comes time to redraw the Flood Insurance Rate Maps, regardless of his accuracy.

    Luckily, with a suitable understanding of the political process and access to a few lawyers and engineers, it is frequently possible to evade such heinous miscarriages of justice as 'being classified as high risk just because your property has a recent history of flooding' and the like.

  5. Re:8 meter rise worst case = dooom by stenvar · · Score: 3

    Farmland is where we decide to farm, it doesn't just "go away". If you mean potential farmland or arable land, climate change causes it to go away in some places, and it causes lots of it to appear in other places. But that's been going on since the last ice age and humanity deals with it easily.