Mapping Urban Risk: Flood Hazards, Race, and Environmental Justice in New York

This paper applies a more nuanced method for mapping population data to estimate the number of people potentially impacted by flood hazards in New York City.  The authors find that the number of people living in the floodplain in New York City is undercounted by traditional mapping methods by 37-72% compared to their method, and that this undercounting was not evenly spread across racial and ethnic groups. The paper also provides a literature review that outlines: why and how various groups of people may be impacted differently by the same disaster event, a review of environmental justice more broadly, and an overview of flood hazards in the U.S.