Short-Term and Long-Term Inundation Risk Insights for Contaminated Sites in the US

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.