Flooded street. Police close Dock Street in downtown Annapolis, Maryland., on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, after winds at high tide caused flooding on two streets in Maryland's capital city. Rhonda Wardlaw, a spokeswoman for the city, said the 10- to 15-mile-per-hour winds created "above an average nuisance flood." (AP Photo/Brian Witte)

When American colonists planned downtown Annapolis, Maryland in 1695, they wanted easy access to the sea. Almost 325 years later, the sea is now closer than ever. It's so close, in fact, that 16 small businesses lost roughly 2% of their revenue in 2017.

In a first-of-its-kind study, Stanford University and Naval Academy researchers looked at the effect of sea-level rise on a single city-block. Specifically, they examined sunny-day floods — inundation that occurs when infrastructure built for lower waters is no longer sufficient to keep back the highest tides — at a central parking lot at City Dock.

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