The first steps into a house are important ones. When it comes to assessing flood risk from hurricanes, first-floor elevation can be a key factor. Agencies such as the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) rely on data such as first-floor elevation in their damage modeling Hazus program.
A new dataset of pre- and post-hurricane damage and first-floor elevation for homes and buildings in a Southwest Florida city was awarded a 2025 DesignSafe Dataset Award, which recognized the dataset’s diverse contributions to natural hazards research.
“This dataset is unique,” said Mehrshad Amini, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Rhode Island. “We gathered very high resolution and component-level damage and first floor elevation data for close to 3,400 buildings in Fort Myers that were impacted by Hurricane Ian (2022).”…