Municipal Infrastructure

ISO works with city managers, municipal building-code authorities, and other community officials to evaluate a community’s commitment to adopt and enforce building codes and National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) requirements.

Building-code evaluations
ISO maintains classification information on building-code adoption, amendments, and enforcement for more than 9,000 enforcement authorities that provide services to more than 19,000 communities around the country. Building-code information can help analyze the possible effects of natural disasters on certain structures in a particular community. The prospect of decreasing catastrophe-related damage provides an incentive for communities to adopt the latest building codes and enforce them rigorously — especially as they relate to windstorm and seismic hazards.

ISO’s evaluations of building-code adoption and enforcement help communities by:

• encouraging the adoption of the most current codes and enhancing code-enforcement departments
• providing benchmark information to compare with other similar communities
• promoting construction of better, more catastrophe-resistant buildings
• reducing property losses from catastrophes
• reducing the economic and social disruption that results from the serious and widespread destruction of natural disasters

Flood management
ISO works closely with community officials, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and flood insurance participants to help satisfy National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) requirements. Since 1991, ISO has administered the NFIP’s Community Rating System (CRS) — a voluntary incentive program that assesses a community’s ability to mitigate flood damage.