FEMA Wants E-Commerce in the Flood Insurance Program's Future.(Federal Emergency Management Agency)(Brief Article)

In an effort to bring flood insurance into the e-commerce age, FEMA is trying to generate private sector interest in an "eRating" system to underwrite flood policies.

But after developing a white paper and holding an initial meeting with interested parties last December, FEMA officials believe the government may have to make an investment in the effort to get it off the ground.

The goal, essentially, is to make it as easy for insurance agents to sell flood insurance as it is to sell other products, such as homeowners insurance, with a limited amount of data. Ideally, an agent could enter a property address into a computer and automatically generate flood insurance rate information.

That would require access to two fundamental pieces of information: the location of the property and the elevation of its lowest floor.

The certification of a property's elevation is the stumbling block.

"Our ideal was to have all these pieces of information available to an agent just by plugging in a property address. That piece is just not out there," said Edward Pasterick, acting director of operations for the flood insurance program.

By contrast, flood determination firms have digitalized the flood zone maps, making it easy to determine if the property is in a flood hazard area. The Federal ...