Short-Term and Long-Term Inundation Risk Insights for Contaminated Sites in the US
Publication: Journal of Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste
Volume 27, Issue 1
Abstract
Flooding of contaminated sites can displace and disperse hazardous materials, and the threat from flooding at several sites is growing. To address this, we present and apply a novel risk-informed framework for identifying and assessing the contaminated sites in the contiguous US that are potentially exposed to inundation in the short term due to coastal and inland flooding, and in the long term due to sea-level rise. We propose an approach to develop insights regarding the contaminated site locations that uses inundation likelihood, Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), and population in the vicinity of each contaminated site. This approach assigns an Insight Score (I-Score) that amalgamates these three factors. Our study results show that a considerable number of contaminated sites with relatively high likelihoods of inundation are located in areas with a high SVI and high population. We present a density-based representation of the I-Score for identifying potential hotspots. The efficient and practical framework proposed in this study could support policymakers in prioritizing the contaminated sites for further assessment and action.
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Acknowledgments
This work was made possible by the National Academies Gulf Research Program Early-Career Research Fellowship. This work was also supported, in part, by University of Maryland institutional research funding and a US. Nuclear Regulatory Commission faculty development Grant (31310018M0043). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations presented in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academies or US NRC.
Notation
The following symbols are used in this paper:
- GSLRi
- global sea level rise that will inundate the site i;
- LEIi
- lowest water elevation that can inundate the site i;
- N
- total number of census tracts; and ratio of local sea-level rise for site i.
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Journal of Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste
Volume 27 • Issue 1 • January 2023
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Feb 18, 2022
Accepted: Jun 28, 2022
Published online: Oct 26, 2022
Published in print: Jan 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Mar 26, 2023
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