A 23,222-home deficit for its poorest renters, the nation's worst bridge condition, $10.4 billion of documented water need — and a rural-hospital map so urban that the at-risk count is honestly zero.
How to read this page: the class chip on every measure is the honesty label. Counted = an inspection or enumeration record. Modeled = a study's projection or risk score — printed with the modeler's name. Assessed = a structured survey of required investment — needs as documented, not measurements of decay. Figures keep the form their source gave them; years are printed on every measure.
Click any category to expand it — every measure with its figure, what it means in plain language, and its source.
Every measure carries its value, class, geography, year, definition, context and source. Three Rhode Island-specific treatments are printed rather than smoothed over. Hospitals: Rhode Island's fleet is effectively urban/suburban, so the CHQPR screen's zero is printed exactly as published — one of five states with no rural hospital at risk — alongside the state's own count of exactly one rural acute-care hospital (Westerly, running the state's lowest operating margin). No suburban hospital has been reclassified as rural to fill the category, and Chartis published no Rhode Island-specific at-risk count in the sources reviewed, so none is printed. Bridges: the FHWA/NBI figure (15.2% poor) is printed with RIDOT's January 2026 re-cataloguing disclosed in the defnote — the state now counts a different universe of structures and reports under 10% deficient; both are named, neither is hidden. Dams and water: the state dam inventory (670) and the National Inventory subset (235) are kept apart, and ASCE's two water-needs vintages ($5.2B/$5.2B in the 2026 sheet against $1.8B/$1.5B in the 2025 sheet — a survey-basis change) are printed together.
Instruments are never blended: USDA's surveyed household rate (10.6%) and Feeding America's modelled individual rate (12.3%) sit side by side unmerged; TTI's per-commuter hour, metro total delay and metro cost are three separate measures; ISO New England's power figures are labelled regional throughout, because Rhode Island's grid is the six-state grid; and NLIHC's ELI deficit is a worst-case-renter instrument, not an all-incomes housing shortfall. One data sunset is flagged on its record: USDA's ERR-358 (2024 data) was the final edition of the federal household food-security report, so that instrument will not refresh.
Severity scores are editorial (0–100 band), calibrated against the other states in this series — Rhode Island's range (26–78) reflects the smallest, densest state in the series: near the national worst on bridge condition, near the national best on broadband and on the rural-hospital screen.