Collaborating Nationally. Empowering Locally.
Flooding remains the leading cause of natural-disaster loss across the United States. The Interagency Flood Risk Management (InFRM) team brings together Federal Partners with mission areas of hazard mitigation, emergency management, floodplain management, natural resources management or conservation to leverage the skillsets, resources and programs to determine the needs of communities and define solutions and implement measures to reduce long term flood risk throughout the States of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
In 2014, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began sponsorship of the InFRM team initiative to allow Federal teams across the States of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana and Arkansas to better align and integrate. Currently, the InFRM team is comprised of FEMA, US Army Corps of Engineers, US Geological Survey, and the National Weather Service. No single agency has all the answers, but through a coordinated effort of multiple programs and various perspectives, a cohesive solution can be found. By applying their shared knowledge, the InFRM team can also enhance response and recovery efforts when flood events do occur.
While floods are impossible to prevent completely, and there is no way to guarantee protection of property, loss of life can be greatly reduced when communities have access to good data, practice sound land use, floodplain management and development practices and incorporate warning systems. Local communities can partner with the InFRM team to investigate solutions to reduce their communities flood risk.
Supercells in central Texas, April 26, 2015. Photo courtesy of Brian Khoury under creative commons license.
This effort will be accomplished by an interagency coalition comprised of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Weather Service. These agencies are currently in partnership through the group known as the Interagency Flood Risk Management (InFRM) team and this effort will be undertaken by this group. The InFRM team will reach out to state and local government organizations as well as private industry to aid in moving this monumental effort forward.
InFRM operates under the umbrella of the Integrated Water Resources Science and Services (IWRSS), a business model for interagency collaboration. IWRSS brings a consortium of United States federal agencies with complementary water resources missions together to share resources to help solve the nation's water resources issues. In 2011 several Federal agencies came together and initiated an Interagency Memorandum of Understanding to create IWRSS. IWRSS's overarching objective is to enable and demonstrate a broad, integrative national water resources information system to serve as a reliable and authoritative means for adaptive water-related planning, preparedness and response activities. The goals are to:
The members of IWRSS are the same four United States federal agencies as InFRM: USACE, USGS, NOAA, and FEMA.
Base Level Engineering is a watershed-wide engineering modeling method that leverages high resolution ground elevation, automated model building techniques, and manual model review to prepare broad and accurate flood risk information for FEMA to assess its current flood hazard inventory. Base Level Engineering prepares flood risk information with scalable engineering, allowing FEMA to both assess its current flood hazard inventory and expand the coverage and availability of flood risk information to communities and individuals interested in reviewing their potential flood risk.
Goal: Centralized and available flood hazard analysis to support floodplain management activities and development review, while increasing risk awareness for individuals.
Methods:
Base Level Engineering provides modeling and floodplain extents to assess these unknown and unverified mileage. Additionally, Base Level Engineering results have been prepared to meet all technical, engineering and mapping standards so that it may be used to update FIRMs in the case that the current inventory is not able to be validated.
Watershed-wide Base Level Engineering assessments develop the following flood risk information, available for download through this site:
Additional items may be available for download to include Hazus analysis (county or HUC8 level), Flood Risk Report, and/or Base Level Engineering Technical Report.
FEMA Region 6 is partnered with the InFRM team to work towards a future state where communities throughout the Region have a minimum dataset that describes the flood risk in their vicinity and allows them to determine a Base Flood Elevation. Base Level Engineering information does not replace the information shown on any current effective FIRM panel in a community, but may be used to identify areas a significant change in the floodplain delineation, water surface elevation or depth since the last flood risk study (both reduction and expansion) should be investigated with communities further.
FEMA will coordinate with local communities prior to initiating an update to the existing flood hazard information shown on FIRM panels across the nation.
Arkansas |
Christy Weiser Christy.Weiser@fema.dhs.gov 202.705.9624 |
Shawn Jackson Shawn.Jackson@agriculture.arkansas.gov 501.682.3959 |
Whit E. Montague Whitney.Montague@agriculture.arkansas.gov 501.682.3969 |
Louisiana |
Alan Johnson Alan.Johnson@fema.dhs.gov 225.620.7062 |
Cindy O'Neal cindy.oneal@la.gov 225.379.3005 |
Susan Veillon Susan.Veillon@la.gov 225.379.3017 |
Oklahoma |
Tarah (Baumgartner) Graham Tarah.Baumgartner@fema.dhs.gov 202.878.1697 |
Jon Phillips Jon.Phillips@owrb.ok.gov 405.255.9145 |
Aaron Milligan Aaron.Milligan@owrb.ok.gov 405.530.8800 |
New Mexico |
Brittany Brush Brittany.Brush@fema.dhs.gov 202.285.8183 |
Loretta Hatch Loretta.Hatch@state.nm.us 505.377.1616 |
Shawn Penman spenman@edac.unm.edu 505.277.3622 x227 |
Texas |
Larry Voice Larry.Voice@fema.dhs.gov 940.898.5419 |
Manuel J. Razo manuel.razo@twdb.texas.gov 512.475.1850 |
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Estimated BFE Viewer |
Diane Howe Diane.Howe@fema.dhs.gov 940.435.9588 |