As presented by Rob Gaines of the FEMA Risk Management Team, Zimmerman Associates

1. Making Maintenance Manageable
Using FME to Maintain FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer
Rob Gaines
Senior GIS Analyst, Zimmerman Associates (FEMA Ctr)
April 18th, 2012

2. What is the NFHL?
 FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer, part of the
National Flood Insurance Program.
 Nationwide regulatory GIS dataset used to
communicate flood risk information.

3. The Numbers
 Compiled from 2081 individual community or
countywide flood study datasets (and growing).
 Average 95 county/communities updated per
month.
 32 spatial layers, 18 lookup tables.
 Over 85 million records in total.

4. How is the NFHL Accessed?
 MapViewer: 100,000 – 200,000 requests per
month.
 KMZ/WMS: 3 – 6 million requests per month.
 NFHL Extract (via state shapefiles).

5. What is the NFHL?

6. What is the NFHL?

7. What is the NFHL?

8. What is the NFHL?

9. FIRM/NFHL Production Structure
FIRM Database PTS rFHL CDS NFHL
County Dataset Regional Dataset National Dataset

10. FIRM/NFHL Production Structure

11. Data Going Effective 4/3/2012

12. Challenges
 Data produced at community level.
 Initial QA/QC process not intended for NFHL.
 Bureaucracy: 10 exceptions to every rule.
 Far removed from data producers.
 Inherited systems.

13. What Is FME Used For?
 QA/QC of data submissions.
 Data replication.
 Extraction.
 Report generation / tracking.
 LOMA Point creation.

14. Basic QA/QC Checks
 All records have DFIRM_ID value.
 All required layers are present.
 No duplicate geometry.
 Flood hazard lines & areas have valid flood zone
values.
 Effective date information is correct.
 New data contains all currently effective LOMRs.

15. QA/QC FME Model

16. QA/QC: DFIRM_ID Value
 Uses FeatureMerger transformer to check that all
records have DFIRM_ID value and all DFIRM_ID
values match a record in the STUDY_INFO table.

17. QA/QC: Required Layers
 Uses ListPopulator and ListExploder along with
FeatureMerger to create a list of all layers present
in submission and then check them against the
list of required layers.

18. QA/QC: Duplicate Geometry
 Concatenates a number of geometric attributes
(such as coordinate count, length / area, etc)
with flat attributes to detect duplicate features
and filter them out.

19. QA/QC: Valid Values
 Uses the AttributeFilter to detect any invalid flood
zone values.

20. QA/QC: LOMR Checker
 Compares submission LOMR layer with current
NFHL LOMR layer to detect any missing
information.

21. Sample QA/QC Sheet

22. Data Staging & Replication
Staging
NFHL
Data
DB
NFHL FME
Data Loader NFHL SDE
NFHL
Data FME FME
Logger Replicator
Log MS Access
Interface
DB

23. StagingLoad Model

24. StagingLoad Model: Logger

25. Replicator Access Query

26. Replicator Access Form

27. Extraction
 Extract all NFHL records into state-based
shapefiles.
 Generate reports such as panel and LOMR count
for each state.
 QC: Check current extract against prior extract to
ensure completeness of layers.

28. Extraction: QC FME Model
 Runs through each state extract.
 Uses ListBuilder to build a list of each state’s
layers and check them against previous month’s.
 Generates Excel report.

29. Extraction: QC Sheet

30. Reporting & Tracking
 Inventory of current NFHL holdings.
 Status of currently effective LOMRs.
 QC of existing NFHL data.
 Missing layers.
 Invalid values.
 Obsolete data.

31. NFHL Inventory Report

32. NFHL LOMR Status Report

33. LOMA Mapper
 Daily process which converts flat data with lat/lon
attributes to geospatial data in SDE.
 Replaced custom-developed VB application.
 Original application: 18+ hour runtime.
FME Model: <10 minute runtime.

34. LOMA Mapper Flowchart

35. LOMA Mapper FME Model

36. Into the Future… FME Server
 Internal
 Automated data submission & QA/QC process.
 External
 Clip/Zip/Ship via MapViewer.
 Custom extracts.
 Custom on-demand GIS services.

37. Thank You!
 Questions?
 For more information:
 Rob Gaines: robert.gaines@riskmapcds.com
Zimmerman Associates Inc. (FEMA Contractor)
 FEMA Map Service Center: http://msc.fema.gov