Flood Management

The Community Rating System
Since 1991, ISO has administered the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) Community Rating System (CRS). The CRS is a voluntary incentive program that assesses a community’s ability to mitigate flood damage. The CRS recognizes and encourages community floodplain-management activities that exceed the minimum NFIP requirements. The CRS has three main goals:

• reduce flood losses, including
• protecting public health and safety
• reducing damage to buildings and contents
• preventing increases in flood damage from new construction
• reducing the risk of erosion damage
• protecting natural and beneficial floodplain functions
• facilitate accurate insurance rating
• promote the awareness of flood insurance

When communities successfully participate in the CRS, their property owners will realize savings on their flood insurance premiums.

To participate in the CRS, communities can choose to undertake a series of public-information and floodplain-management activities. To get credit, community officials need to prepare an application documenting the efforts. The CRS assigns credit points for each activity, and based on the total number of points a community earns, the CRS assigns the community to one of ten classes. Premium discounts on flood insurance are based on the class.

CRS activities fall into four series:

• public information — advising people about the flood hazard and ways to reduce flood damage
• mapping and regulations — includes programs that provide increased protection to new development
• flood damage reduction — activities that reduce the flood risk to existing development
• flood preparedness — activities such as flood warning and dam safety programs

Many communities can get credit for programs that a state or regional agency implements on behalf of its communities.

A community’s chief executive officer (such as a mayor or city manager) must appoint a CRS coordinator to serve as the liaison between the community and FEMA. For more information on this program, click here or call ISO Customer Service at 1-800-888-4476, option 6.