“To amend the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 to require that certain information is made publicly available, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section establishes requirements for public availability of National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) data to support flood risk research and technology development. (As background, the NFIP, administered by FEMA, provides flood insurance to property owners in participating communities and uses Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) to identify Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs) requiring insurance.) It directs the NFIP Administrator to make publicly available, via an open source electronic data system, specified flood risk-related information including (1) property-level risk data, loss ratios (i.e., claims paid divided by premiums paid in a fiscal year), and loss identifications; (2) current and historical policy details limited to amount and term for insured and previously insured properties; (3) current and historical claims details limited to date and amount paid; (4) whether properties were built before or after a community's initial FIRM effective date; (5) mitigated properties (e.g., elevated or bought out); and (6) multiple-loss properties (i.e., repetitive loss structures or severe repetitive loss structures per current law) lacking mitigation. Not later than one year after enactment, it further requires a publicly searchable database on NFIP-participating communities covering (1) program compliance status, noncompliance findings, and enforcement actions; (2) pre-FIRM and post-FIRM SFHA properties; (3) total current and historical non-SFHA claims; (4) multiple-loss properties; and (5) SFHA coverage as a percentage and in square miles. All information must be aggregated at the ZIP Code or census block level (identifying community and state), while protecting personally identifiable information per the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. 552a).