Disasters & flood insurance
OpenFEMA in Python: disaster declarations by county since 1953, declaration types and programs, NFIP flood insurance claims, hurricane claim maps, and the per-county rows, statewide codes and negative payments that trip up a count.
FEMA publishes the record of federal disaster response through OpenFEMA: every disaster declaration since 1953, and every National Flood Insurance Program claim, redacted for privacy. The declarations file has 5,281 declarations in 70,567 rows, one per designated area, and the claims since 2017 are 506,808 rows. Together they show where federal help was authorised and where insured flood damage was paid.
The guides here map declarations by county, explain the declaration types, chart the trend, total the flood claims by event and county, measure how many come from outside the mapped flood zone, explain what a claim pays, and map hurricane claims on FEMA's rounded grid. Three pages deal with the traps: rows that are designated areas rather than disasters, county code 000 for statewide and tribal rows, and the negative payments and mixed-unit water depths in the claims.
🧭 Start with the concepts
The ideas the how-to guides below assume you already have.
⚙️ Then do the task
Step-by-step walkthroughs with code you can copy and adapt.
- How to Map FEMA Disaster Declarations by County in Python
- How to Chart Disaster Declarations Over Time by Incident Type
- How to Analyse NFIP Flood Insurance Claims in Python
- How Many Flood Insurance Claims Come from Outside the Flood Zone?
- How to Map a Hurricane's Flood Insurance Claims: Harvey, Ian and Helene
🔧 When it breaks
The errors this topic produces, with the cause explained rather than just the command.
Related topics
Subjects that keep coming up alongside this one, most overlap first.