New Brunswick, N.J. (June 29, 2020) – Rutgers University–New Brunswick professor Robert E. Kopp is available for interviews on new flood risk data for more than 142 million homes and properties in the United States. The data were released by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research and technology group that is working to define the nation’s increasing flood risk.

Rutgers led the development of the sea-level rise projections used in the analysis and contributed to development of a Climate Impact Lab coastal flooding model. Kopp is a lab co-director.

Every property in the contiguous U.S. is given a 1 to 10 “Flood Factor” based on its cumulative risk of flooding over a 30-year mortgage. People can look up a property’s Flood Factor and learn more about its past, present and future flood risk at FloodFactor.com, an online visualization tool, according to the First Street Foundation.

“Sea-level rise is exposing an increasing number of coastal properties to flooding from extreme high tides and storms,” said Kopp, director of the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences. “These changes will play an increasingly important role in property markets, and robust scientific and economic risk analyses are crucial to protecting homeowners and communities.”

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Broadcast interviews: Rutgers University has broadcast-quality TV and radio studios available for remote live or taped interviews with Rutgers experts. For more information, contact Neal Buccino at [email protected]

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