Is my Home at Risk of Flooding?
Anyone who’s considered an Illinois flood insurance policy has probably heard of flood zones. These zones represent the likelihood of a flood event occurring in an area. They range from high-risk zones to no-risk zones, with high-risk zones being properties with roughly a 1% annual chance of flooding, and no-risk zones posing a minimum risk of flooding. But with many affected homes falling outside these risk zones, there are a number of new approaches being used to measure flood risk.
These include the analysis of floodwater flow in order to assess how an area will be affected if a flood occurred. This type of analysis takes into account elevation and topography in order to provide a more accurate risk profile. Other approaches carefully make a risk assessment of dams and levees to determine what might happen if one of these were to be breeched; and some counties and states now work together to assess and manage flood risk. The result is an increasingly accurate risk assessment profile that can give you a much better idea of your home’s actual risk of flood.