From the Homeland Security Newswire: Flood risk for Americans is greatly underestimated,

A new study has found that forty-one million Americans are at risk from flooding rivers, which is more than three times the current estimate—based on regulatory flood maps—of thirteen million people. The study is based on a new high-resolution model that maps flood risk across the entire continental United States, whereas the existing regulatory flood maps produced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cover about 60 percent of the continental United States. Avoiding future losses is particularly important as average flood losses in the United States have increased steadily to nearly $10 billion annually.

Here is another take on the topic from Vox: We’ve radically underestimated how vulnerable Americans are to flooding. New research claims that official estimates lowballed the risk by, uh, about a factor of three.