Check out these maps that show how flooding may impact people, places, and
natural resources in a region. Take two minutes to see how easy it is to use the
Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper to create and share maps to engage your community.
First, type in your address or location of interest. The default map is the
Coastal Flood Hazard Composite. It was built by combining zones from various
flood hazard data sets. Look at the legend to see the number of hazard zones in
this area. If you click on the image, you can see which hazard zones are present.
If you want to change the base map, choose from the street layer, dark, or
imagery. Pan around and zoom into a location with a lot of haz ard zones.
If you want to share this image, just click on "share map" and copy the web address.
Now go to the left-hand corner of the screen to explore the various layer
options. If seeing the Coastal Flood Composite layer would be helpful to your
team, go ahead and save this map to start building your collection. If you're
interested in FEMA flood zones, turn on that layer. You can adjust the layer
opacity here, reducing it so it's easier to see the underlying imagery. There are
societal, infrastructure, and ecosystem map layers too. Let's say your team is
interested in critical facilities—go ahead and click on that layer. Click on
the info icon to get background and context on the importance of considering
where critical facilities may be exposed to flood risk in your community. Now you
can see which critical facilities are in the flood zone.
If you click on an icon, you get information on the facility type and
name. If this is a map you want, go ahead and click "save map." View all your saved
maps here. You can add a custom description, export the map as an image
file, with or without the title, or just the legend. There's an option to copy and
share the web address from here as well. Finally, you have the ability to share
your collection of saved maps here. Click "copy all," to copy and paste the
collection into an email or other document for future reference. Or
download it as a text file too. One handy tip: your browser will store your saved
maps for future use. Now that you've seen how easy it is to create and share maps
using the Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper, give it a try and help your community
assess their vulnerability and tackle flood risk.