Criss gave a preview of his paper, published later in the Journal of Earth Science, arguing that the statistical methods used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to define flood risk are outdated. Talk of 100-year or 500-year floods is meaningless, as are some of the flood plain maps, Criss said. The frequency of major flooding events, in part due to climate change but greatly due to bad river management, are increasing. The old math, he argued, needs some new equations.
Months later, as rising water tops interstates, threatens levees and swallows towns such as Pacific and Union and West Alton, Criss has another message that many won’t want to hear:
