Property Atlas

County hazard profile

Cook, IL

Illinois · pop. 5,272,775 · FIPS 17031

Very High
FEMA risk rating · RATING
Cold Wave
dominant hazard
$2.4B
modeled expected annual loss/yr

Expected annual loss · all 3,232 U.S. counties

among the highest nationally

national median $15M/yr Cook $2.4B

A real dollar distribution: most counties sit far below a handful of high-exposure ones. A FEMA model of annual loss, not a record of disasters.

FEMA national percentile scores

FEMA/CDC score each county 0–100 against all others — the score is the national rank (RATING). Higher risk and vulnerability are worse; higher resilience is better.

FEMA risk indexVery High 99.97/100
national median ~50 among the highest nationally
Social vulnerabilityRelatively High 61.74/100
national median ~50 near the national middle (62nd percentile)
Community resilienceRelatively High 73.28/100
national median ~50 near the national middle (73rd percentile)

Recorded · NFIP flood claims RECORDED

Realized flood losses in Cook

The National Flood Insurance Program has paid 15,191 flood-insurance claims totaling $139.5M in Cook since 1978. The costliest year was 2013 ($35.7M paid).

Flood-insurance dollars paid by year of loss

1978: $144,054 paid 1979: $912,791 paid 1980: $101,039 paid 1981: $2,003,106 paid 1982: $2,318,914 paid 1983: $547,053 paid 1984: $62,175 paid 1985: $128,386 paid 1986: $2,253,175 paid 1987: $8,537,197 paid 1988: $20,015 paid 1989: $323,213 paid 1990: $712,685 paid 1991: $60,237 paid 1992: $16,887 paid 1993: $271,143 paid 1994: $59,397 paid 1995: $44,415 paid 1996: $2,119,381 paid 1997: $1,692,784 paid 1998: $111,449 paid 1999: $187,033 paid 2000: $53,543 paid 2001: $644,710 paid 2002: $320,411 paid 2003: $503,172 paid 2004: $154,177 paid 2005: $70,884 paid 2006: $2,333,765 paid 2007: $2,199,794 paid 2008: $33,837,196 paid 2009: $610,165 paid 2010: $18,054,988 paid 2011: $7,289,421 paid 2012: $86,326 paid 2013: $35,669,068 paid 2014: $2,177,973 paid 2015: $2,075,817 paid 2016: $584,208 paid 2017: $1,062,881 paid 2018: $1,011,322 paid 2019: $912,446 paid 2020: $4,919,026 paid 2021: $641,125 paid 2022: $498,925 paid 2023: $665,098 paid 2024: $153,523 paid 2025: $326,534 paid 2026: $43,720 paid 2013 · $35.7M 1978 2026
$139.5M
total paid
$9,185
average claim
$912K
largest single claim
66%
in high-risk flood zones (A/V)

RECORDED — these are actual paid NFIP claims (a redacted census from OpenFEMA), not a model. They are the realized counterpart to the FEMA risk score above: one is what happened and got paid, the other is what a model predicts.

Scope: these are flood-insurance claims, so they undercount flooding where owners were uninsured — read this as "what NFIP paid here," not "every flood." County-level totals, not a per-property or per-address verdict. Verify a specific address and buy coverage at FloodSmart.gov; the underlying data is OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Claims.

What these figures mean

  • RATING — the FEMA risk score, expected loss, social vulnerability, and resilience are FEMA/CDC models, not records of disasters that happened. The 0–100 scores are already national percentiles.
  • MEASURED — population is a recorded census figure.
  • COMPUTED — the county's rank within the dollar-loss distribution is our placement over the 3,232 counties.
  • CONTEXT — the note below is framing, not a measurement.

Also available: structured data (JSON-LD) · plain text

What this is — and is not

This is FEMA/CDC modeled hazard exposure for Cook, IL and where it ranks among U.S. counties. It is not a verdict on whether Cook is a good or bad place to live — hazard exposure is not place quality, and a county can't opt out of its geography. It is not a per-property or per-address risk assessment, not a prediction of any specific disaster, and not insurance advice. For site-specific risk use a per-property assessment; for the underlying model see FEMA National Risk Index.