National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System

Author : United States. Federal Emergency Management Agency
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (84 download)

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Download or read book National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System written by United States. Federal Emergency Management Agency and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) provides federally backed flood insurance within communities that enact and enforce floodplain regulations. Since its inception in 1968, the NFIP has been very successful in helping flood victims get back on their feet. As of December 2011, there were nearly 5.6 million residential and commercial policies in force, with over $1.26 trillion in written coverage with annual premiums of almost $3.5billion. From 1978 through 2011, over 1.4 million losses were paid, totaling over $38 billion. To be covered by a flood insurance policy (for the structure and/or its contents), a property must be in a community that participates in the NFIP. To qualify for the NFIP, a community adopts and enforces a floodplain management ordinance to regulate development in flood hazard areas. The objective of the ordinance is to minimize the potential for flood damage to future development. Today, over 21,600 communities in 56 states and territories participate in the NFIP. The NFIP has been effective in requiring new buildings to be protected from damage by a 1% chance flood, also known as the 100-year or base flood. However, flood damage still results from floods that exceed the base flood, from flooding in unmapped areas, and from flooding that affects buildings constructed before the community joined the NFIP. Under the Community Rating System (CRS), communities can be rewarded for doing more than simply regulating construction of new buildings to the minimum national standards. Under the CRS, the flood insurance premiums of a community's residents and businesses are discounted to reflect that community's work to reduce flood damage to existing buildings, manage development in areas not mapped by the NFIP, protect new buildings beyond the minimum NFIP protection level, preserve and/or restore natural functions of floodplains, help insurance agents obtain flood data, and help people obtain flood insurance. This series presents an overview of the purpose, goals, and contextual background of the Community Rating System (CRS), the benefits of the program, and the community's role and responsibilities. The activities that are credited under the CRS are listed here, along with the points that may be obtained for each activity, and a description of how those points are translated into CRS classifications and premium reductions. The last part of this series (Section 120) is a glossary of terms used throughout the CRS Coordinator's Manual.