Employment in Coastal Inundation Zones dataviewer is a new aid to coastal planners

What if Florida planners knew what risks a hurricane would pose to businesses, or if a California county knew how employees would be affected by a flood. Wouldn’t that be helpful for contingency planning?

The National Ocean Service believes the answer is “yes.”

That affirmative answer is what’s behind the November 12, 2024, release of the new dataviewer that uses maps to make the number of businesses, jobs, and employees potentially impacted by hurricane storm surge, 100-year floods, sea level rise, and tsunamis easier to visualize.

The dataviewer maps the one million jobs in FEMA special flood hazard areas — areas with a 1% annual chance of flooding — of 600 different U.S. coastal and river counties. It reports employment in the tsunami zone of 50 counties across California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. The dataviewer also estimates the number of jobs in 200 counties that would be at risk from hurricane storm surge and calculates the number of jobs in over 200 coastal counties that would be affected by inundation under different levels of sea level rise.

The information can be used to inform planning, future development, climate change coastal adaptation policies and strategies, and decision-making on the ground to ensure the industries in coastal areas remain resilient. It is available for public download and includes data from 2019-2021 so users can develop an understanding of their risks over time. As information is added over a longer period, users can develop an understanding of how their adaptation strategies affected their risk or their exposure.

NOS anticipates this information will be useful to a wide array of partners and users, including floodplain managers, city planners, emergency managers, economic development agencies, state coastal zone management programs, private industry located in coastal areas, and coastal municipalities.

The dataset supporting the dataviewer focuses on coastal areas and shoreline counties, since maritime commerce and marine economic activity take place primarily in these areas — they are also the most susceptible to flooding. 

In the dataviewer, the marine economy encompasses six sectors consisting of over 40 industries that depend on the ocean or Great Lakes for their business activities. These sectors include living resources, marine transportation, ship- and boatbuilding, marine construction, offshore mineral resources, and tourism and recreation.

The dataset is unique in that it is the only federal data source that provides insights on an industry level and by marine sector.

The dataviewer uses datasets from an analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, employment and wages quarterly data. The results show the number of establishments and the number of jobs, by state and county, within a modeled inundation, or flooding, hazard area.

NOS and BLS signed a memorandum of understanding that allowed NOAA to access data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages to develop the Economics: National Ocean Watch database. The current effort represents an expansion of the relationship between the two bureaus.

The Employment in Coastal Inundation Zones dataviewer is available via the Digital Coast website and on NOAA’s GeoPlatform.