Metro Detroit Basement Risk Index

A free, public dataset scoring all 116 communities in metro Detroit (Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties) on basement-flood risk, built from U.S. Census housing data and City of Detroit flood records by Basement Risk Check, a southeast Michigan homeowner resource.

Full report and methodology: https://basementriskcheck.com/report

The headline finding: the communities most at risk for basement flooding are the oldest, not the wealthiest. Grosse Pointe and Novi have nearly identical median home values but Basement Risk Index scores of 96 and 3, because what drives basement water here is housing age and aging sewer infrastructure, not income. Detroit's older neighborhoods carry real, documented risk: more than 13,400 water-in-basement reports in the City of Detroit's 311 record.

This deposit includes two files: the 116-community Basement Risk Index, and a Detroit basement-flood equity dataset (documented water-in-basement rate by ZIP against income and demographics). Method: an honest hybrid of U.S. Census housing-age measures, with Detroit's score blending in its real 311 records; suburban scores are modeled from housing data and labeled as modeled. Scores are rescaled 0 to 100.

Sources: U.S. Census ACS 2022 5-year estimates; City of Detroit Improve Detroit / 311 records; U.S. Census TIGER/Line boundaries.

License: CC BY 4.0. Please credit Basement Risk Check and link to https://basementriskcheck.com/report.