Projected Annual Loss: A county’s average yearly economic losses (as a dollar range) from a specific natural hazard in a future emissions scenario. Why the weird dollar ranges? Because FEMA used a clustering algorithm to group counties into risk tiers in the base National Risk Index. The Future Risk Index uses the same risk “bins” so you can compare today’s risk with future risk.
Projected Risk Rating: Like Projected Annual Loss, but also includes social vulnerability and community resilience, which adjust projected economic losses up or down. This offers a more holistic view of risk. The Risk Rating is based on economic projections but it is presented only as a comparative rating, not a dollar amount, because future social conditions are unpredictable and dollar estimates could be misleading.
Hazard Multiplier: Shows change in expected economic losses from a given hazard between today and a future scenario. A multiplier of 4 means a county’s projected future losses are 4x their current losses. Some high-risk areas have low multipliers because their risk is already extreme. That’s why California’s wildfire multipliers are lower than the Midwest’s.
This is a rebuilt version of FEMA’s Future Risk Index for the United States. The Future Risk Index adds a climate change multiplier to FEMA’s National Risk Index, which measures the economic impact of natural hazards. The Future Risk Index shows how those impacts change when you take climate change into account. The map shows one hazard, one output type, and one emissions scenario at a time. You can change these using the filters.
The Future Risk Index uses ICPP emissions scenarios: Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) or Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), depending on the hazard.
What’s not included: Future population growth, changing demographics, land use changes, adaptation. This tool shows how climate change will impact communities if all else is held the same.