The US COVID-19 pandemic in the flood season

Flooding displaces large populations each season, which potentially increases the exposure of the vulnerable societies. Having failed to curve down the number of people infected with COVID-19 in the first wave of the pandemic, many states in the United States (U.S.) are now at high risk of the concurrence of the two disasters. Assessing this compound risk before the country enters the flood season is of vital importance. Therefore, we provide a prompt tool to assess the compound risk of COVID-19 at the county level over the U.S. We find that (1) the number of flood insurance house claims can proxy the displaced population accurately with more spatiotemporal detail, and (2) the high-risk areas of both flooding and COVID-19 are concentrated along the southern and eastern coasts and some parts of the Mississippi River. Our findings may trigger the interest of further exploring the topics related to the concurrence of COVID-19 and flooding.