Guidelines and Standards for Flood Risk Analysis and Mapping

Guidance – A recommended approach to meet the standard. Accepted approaches are not limited to this recommended approach; mapping partners may use other methods to meet or exceed the standards.

Best Practices/Lessons Learned – Any method, in addition to guidance, that meets or exceeds the standard. Best practices are shared by regions and mapping partners following successful approaches to program activities.

All the standards for the Risk MAP program have been published as a FEMA policy. This policy supersedes all of the standards included in the previous Guidelines And Specifications For Flood Hazard Mapping Partners and associated procedure memorandums. However, useful guidance is still available in these documents.

Guidelines and Standards Transformation

In 2011, FEMA undertook a multi-year project to improve the way guidelines and standards are published, maintained and used. The final product of the first phase of work is the Policy for Flood Risk Analysis and Mapping, which comprises the standards for practitioners of the Risk MAP program.
 
The Policy for Flood Risk Analysis and Mapping outlines FEMA’s requirements to produce better overall consistency and more efficient operation of mapping activities. In the past, FEMA published guidelines and standards together in the same document comprising a document library called the "Guidelines and Specifications." In the new policy, standards are published separately from guidance.

The Policy for Flood Risk Analysis and Mapping represents the vision of the transformation processes and has set the stage for future updates and revisions. The new policy also includes mapping elements from the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 (BW12). Many of the substantial reforms in BW12 are required to be implemented in coordination with the new Technical Mapping Advisory Council (TMAC). The development and implementation of these additional changes will happen over the next several years as the TMAC makes its recommendations to FEMA.

Over the next year, FEMA will work to complete the guidelines and standards transformation by revising and transforming guidance.

Finding Standards, Guidance and Related Documents

The standards policy, guidance and related documents are all stored in the FEMA Library. FEMA has created a Master Index that provides a cross-reference of the new guidelines and standards documentation available. Because the guidance transformation is not yet complete, new guidance documents are not available for all topics. Until the transformation is complete, practitioners may refer to historical documents for assistance. There is a one-page document titled "Flood Risk Analysis and Mapping Instruction for Using Interim Guidance" which provides instructions on how to do this. Both of these documents can be found at: Finding Standards, Guidance and Related Documents.

Guidelines and Standards Maintenance

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) maintains standards and guidance on an semi-annual basis to support the Risk MAP program. At the beginning of each cycle, FEMA will publish a maintenance announcement outlining the planned changes.  During each maintenance cycle, FEMA conducts a public review of draft standards. The review period will last one month and will generally start three months prior to the completion of the maintenance cycle. The most recent public review announcement or the most recent summary of public review comments and associated responses is published in the Public Review.

A list of changes previously made to the guidelines and standards are provided in a Diary of Revisions. Risk MAP has implemented a version numbering system to assist in understanding which version of the standards and guidance was used for a particular project.

The Maintenance Announcement, Diary of Revisions and the Risk MAP Version ID Number reference can be found on the Maintenance Page.