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The US is exposed to myriad natural hazards causing USD billions in damages and thousands of fatalities each year. Significant population and economic growth during the last several decades have resulted in more people residing in hazardous places. However, consistent national-scale hazard threat assessment techniques reflecting the state of hazard knowledge are not readily available for application in risk and vulnerability assessments. Mapping natural hazard threats is the crucial first step in identifying and implementing threat reduction or mitigation strategies. In this study, we demonstrate applied GIS approaches for creating and synthesizing US hazard threat extents using publicly available data for 15 natural hazards. Individually mapping each threat enables empirically supported intervention development and the building of a Composite Hazard Index (CHI). Summarizing the hazard frequencies provides a novel representation of US hazardousness. Implementing cluster analysis to regionalize US counties based on their underlying hazard characteristics offers insight into hazard threats’ spatial (non-political) natures. The results indicate that the southeast, central plains, and coastal regions of the northeast had high hazard occurrence scores, whereas more moderate hazard scores were observed west of the continental divide. Furthermore, while no place is safe from hazard occurrence, identifying each region’s distinct “hazardousness” can support individualized risk assessments and mitigation intervention development.

In the United States, direct losses from natural hazards are on the rise with hurricanes, flooding, and severe storms contributing about three quarters of the total damages. While losses from severe storms have been stable over the past fifty years, hurricane and flood losses have tripled. Per capita losses are also increasing showing that impacts outpace population growth with high per capita losses occurring largely in the Southeast and Midwest. If the loss escalation of the past two decades continues into the future, then direct losses of $300 to $400 billion within a single decade are possible. In order to reverse this trend, sustainable development, vulnerability reduction, and hazard mitigation must become priorities and current loss reduction efforts need to be evaluated and re-assessed in terms of their effectiveness. These conclusions are drawn from the analysis of spatial and temporal trends in direct losses from natural hazards using SHELDUS TM data from 1960 through 2009. Loss data are adjusted for inflation, population, and wealth to capture both trends in total losses and per capita losses. The loss data are then compared to disaster-related federal government and private insurance expenditures.

The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper. Due to mislabeling, replace: [...]

The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper. Due to mislabeling, replace: [...]

The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper. Due to mislabeling, replace: [...]