This dataset is a cleaned, analysis-ready look at community participation in the National Flood Insurance Program.
The original data, obtained from FEMA, captures in-force (active) policies, total insured value and total annual premium costs in more than 18,000 communities — across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. — on December 31, 2012 and June 30, 2017. Additionally, the Associated Press cleaned and enhanced the data with additional information, including:
- standardization of community names across both survey years to enable comparisons between 2012 and 2017 participation,
- aggregation of data at the county and state level, and
- appending Census FIPS codes to county-level data.
The data also includes a summary table of total active policies, value, and premiums annual, between 1978 and 2017.
Using this dataset, the Associated Press showed that the number of active insurance policies has dropped 14 percent since peaking at 5.7 million in 2009. The steepest decline has been over the past five years. In 2017, there were a total of 4,943,218 policies active, and the insured property had a value of $1.23 trillion. In 2012, there were 5,496,457 policies active, and the insured property had a value of $1.27 trillion.
Since 2012, the number of properties covered under the flood insurance program has dropped 10 percent, from nearly 5.5 million to about 4.9 million. This is as the program has struggled financially to cover increasing amounts of losses from increasingly frequent flooding events.
Provided in collaboration with Associated Press
