FEMA Needs Better Flood Insurance Data.

This viewpoint is an excerpt from the report of JayEtta Hecker, director for physical infrastructure issues at the General Accounting Office, about the GAO's review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Flood Insurance Program. FEMA is seeking to increase the percentage of homes in flood hazard areas that are insured.

FEMA has a number of performance goals aimed at improving the results of the NFIP, including increasing the number of insurance policies in force. While these goals provide valuable insights into how well the NFIP's mission of reducing flood-related losses is being carried out, they do not assess the degree to which the most vulnerable residents - those living in flood-prone areas - participate in the program. Capturing data on the numbers of uninsured and insured structures in flood-prone areas can provide FEMA with another indication of how effectively the program is penetrating those areas most at risk of flooding, whether the financial consequences of floods in these areas are increasing or decreasing and where marketing efforts can be better targeted.

However, before participation rates can be used to measure the success of the NFIP, better data is needed on the total number of structures in flood-prone areas. While the Federal Insurance Administration tracks data on the number of insurance policies in these areas, data on the overall number of structures is incomplete and inaccurate. Some communities are developing more accurate data on the number of structures in flood-prone areas. FEMA is also working to improve the quality of its data on the number of structures in flood-prone areas and is participating in the development of new mapping technologies that could facilitate the collection of such data. The cost of using the new technologies to gather data on the number of structures is not fully known, but this expense will be shared through partnerships with federal, state and local agencies.

The NFIP seeks to minimize human suffering and flood-related property losses by making flood insurance available on reasonable terms and encouraging its purchase by people who need flood insurance protection - particularly those living in flood-prone areas known as special flood hazard areas (SFHA). Prior to the flood insurance program's inception, private insurance companies generally did not offer coverage for flood disasters because of the high risks involved, such as ...