Tool Update
Find neighborhoods with high climate risk within any U.S. state
Neighborhoods at Risk shows where people may experience unequal impacts from hurricanes, flooding, and extreme heat. Now available for every community, county, and state in the nation.
New research shows where wildfire mitigation can be highly cost effective
The United States is spending billions of dollars on suppressing wildfires that threaten a growing number of homes, but very little on better preparing communities before a wildfire occurs.
Match requirements prevent rural and low-capacity communities from accessing climate resilience funding
Many federal grant programs require communities to provide a local match, creating barriers for rural and underserved places.
Capacity-limited states still struggle to access FEMA BRIC grants
Places with lower capacity are failing to get funding through FEMA’s flagship grant program, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC).
Economic impact of national parks
Millions of national park visitors generate economic opportunities for gateway communities, spending money that creates jobs and income. See the trends for every national park service unit.
Yellowstone Flood reveals Montana’s mobile home flood risk
Montana’s mobile home residents face disproportionate flood risk and traditional solutions leave them behind.
Green Infrastructure: Cost-effective solutions to flooding
Green infrastructure can provide long-term, cost-effective solutions to flooding and can help communities adapt to climate change. We provide a cost breakdown for eight green infrastructure practices.
Construction costs for a wildfire-resistant home: California edition
In light of rising wildfire risks, we analyzed the costs of constructing homes to three levels of wildfire resistance in California.
Wood roofs are a $6 billion wildfire problem
At least 1.2 million wood roofs are in areas with wildfire risk. Funding is needed to help communities prepare for wildfire.
A rural capacity map
A new map helps identify communities where investments in staffing and expertise are needed to support infrastructure and climate resilience projects.
Wildfires destroy thousands of structures each year
Explore the number of structures destroyed in each state by wildfire. Structures lost—rather than acres burned—provides a more complete measure of the broad impacts of wildfire.
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Mountain, Midwest, and Gulf States fail to secure FEMA resilience funding
Rural and lower capacity communities failed to successfully compete for FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) funding in FY 2020.
Improving benefit-cost analyses for rural areas
Benefit-cost analysis, required for many federal funding sources, puts smaller, rural, and low-income communities at a disadvantage.
Watch: Living with widfire
Wildfires are an inescapable and necessary function of healthy ecosystems. In the past decade they have increased in severity and duration, killed more people, and burned more structures.
The unequal impacts of wildfire
See where wildfire risk intersects social and economic factors that can make it difficult for people to prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfire.
About Headwaters Economics
Headwaters Economics is an independent, nonprofit research group that works to improve community development and land management decisions.
Our Data Tools
Headwaters Economics maintains free, easy-to-use tools to help you better understand socioeconomic data and trends. Find data from dozens of sources for thousands of places in the United States.
Explore our free data tools
Our latest data updates:
- American Community Survey data are current through 2021 in the Economic Profile System and Neighborhoods at Risk
- Estimates of jobs and wages by industry current through 2021 in the Economic Profile System (December 2022)
- State-level data now searchable in Neighborhoods at Risk (October 2022)
- Nonemployer Statistics updated in the Economic Profile System reports for Mining, Oil, & Gas and Timber (September 2022)
- Tribal areas now searchable in Wildfire Risk to Communities (August 2022)
Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire
Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire (CPAW) works with communities to reduce wildfire risk through improved land use planning. The program is a program of Headwaters Economics, in partnership with the USDA Forest Service.
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