What is First Americans process for completing flood determinations?
According to the federal regulations, the flood zone determination must be based upon the current FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM). The foundation of our flood zone determination process is a multi-level database, which is based on two complementary processes. The first component is a vast database of nearly two decades worth of manually completed determinations. These determinations are created when one of our Map Analysts examines the hard copy FIRM and renders a determination. The analyst who specializes in the specific geographic region involved may also use other resources from our extensive library to locate the specific structure on the FEMA map. These resources can include tax maps, plats, surveys, subdivision maps, lot and block information, section/township/range, aerial photographs, and legal descriptions. The second building block in our process is state-of-the-art Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, which is a computerized mapping approach that gives us a
