Combining satellite remote sensing and statistics to understand long-term trends in water quality.

Chesapeake Bay

South River

West River

Rhode River

Water-Level Risk Assessment -South River, Maryland.

We provide site specific climate risk assessments and explain them to the customer.

Key findings-Nuisance flooding is expected to happen multiple times per year.

- Nuisance flooding is expected to happen multiple times per year.

-Damaging surge events (0.30 m ~ 1’) occur on average every one to two years. The 1-year event (0.84 m ~2.8’) destroys approximately 42% of fixed asset value ($1.0M on a $2.5M base).

-There is a 1% chance on a 100-year event (consistent with the current FEMA zone AE classification).

-The 100-year event (1.39 m ~ 4.6’) causes $2.1M in damage (85% of asset value), consistent with Hurricane Isabel (2003) impacts on Annapolis-area marinas.

-Over a 30-year horizon, there is a 95% probability of at least one 10-year event and a 26% probability of at least one 100-year event.

Water front properties in the South River, similar to other coastal properties in the Chesapeake Bay area are already affected by frequent nuisance flooding and blue-sky flooding. Sea-level rise and the increase in the frequency of extreme weather events increases the probability of catastrophic flooding. This analysis quantifies water-level risk across three categories: flooding (frequency based on data), extreme surge events (quantified here via statistical predictions), and sea level rise (based on model predictions).