New map of flood risks shows electricity and water do mix—quite often

Aqua represents a one percent flood risk annually, orange a 0.2 percent. All of the icons shown are electricity generating facilities.

Today, the US Energy Information Agency announced the availability of a new mapping tool that details the flood risk faced by our existing energy infrastructure. The map has icons located on sites like distribution terminals and power plants and allows users to overlay the existing flood risk on those sites. The clear message is that a lot of our infrastructure is already at risk.

Shown above is a region in New York City with multiple power plants and most of them are in the region that's considered to be at a one percent annual risk for a flood. (La Guardia Airport isn't in great shape, either.) This is partly the result of historical accidents. Generating stations were once supplied by barge, and once the infrastructure was in place (transmission lines, etc.) and land became scarce elsewhere in the city, the facilities became locked in place, even as they transitioned to natural gas.

Now the facilities need to be hardened against flooding—the extended blackout in downtown Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy highlighted the consequences of failing to do so. The challenge is that we need to harden hundreds of moving targets given the combination of local conditions and the continual sea level rise that's expected for the coming centuries.