How FEMA redacts NFIP claims
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) pays claims on flood insurance policies. FEMA publishes a file of claims through OpenFEMA. This guide follows the page of that dataset.
It is derived from the National Flood Insurance Program system of record, staged in the program's reporting platform and redacted to protect policy holder personally identifiable information.
This dataset is not intended to be an official federal report, and should not be considered an official federal report.
What this site shows
The site adds the claims by the ZIP Code, by the county code and by the year of loss. A page shows the count of claims for each year. It shows the amount paid for a year with 5 or more claims, unless 1 to 4 of them have a payment. No page shows one claim.
A claim has a code for a county and a ZIP Code. FEMA says what the two fields mean.
5-digit Postal Zip Code of the insured property as reported by WYO partners
Note, the County Code field may not reflect the individual county the property is located as projects can be associated with more than one county
FEMA also makes the location of a claim less exact to protect privacy. The site does not use it.
The precision has been lessened to ensure individual privacy. This may result in a point location that exists in an incorrect county or state. Use the state and county fields for record aggregation for these dimensions
What the totals show
- The years in which an area had NFIP claims, and how many.
- The amount paid on the claims of a year. The year needs 5 or more claims, and the amount must not be close to one payment.
- The count of claims for each 1,000 policies in force in a county, as a rough measure.
What the totals do not show
- Whether a given property flooded. The totals have no address.
- A flood that no NFIP policy covered. The file has the claims of policy holders only.
- A forecast. The file is a record of the past.
The use of the data
FEMA says that it cannot check an analysis of its data after a user downloads the data.
FEMA cannot verify the quality and/or timeliness of any data or any analysis derived therefrom after the data has been retrieved from FEMA.gov.
Date of the last check against the agency pages: