Determining how close a building is to an identified flood hazard can be a difficult and thankless task, but it is an important one. Correctly certifying a building's elevation above the flood plain can mean a difference of hundreds of dollars each year in flood insurance premiums to the building's owner. However, if a flood occurs and the property owner learns, too late, that his or her damaged building was under insured because the certificate used to determine flood risk was completed incorrectly, litigation can result.

Surveyors' Role in Flood Protection
Although many surveyors never come into direct contact with the federal government's Elevation Certificate in the course of their work, understanding the important role this form plays in community development and flood plain management enhances the assistance land surveyors and engineers provide their clients.

Each year, development increases along America's coasts, lakes, rivers and other waterways. Where there is water, there is risk of flooding. Financial protection from flood losses has been available only since 1968, when Congress created the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Through the NFIP, federally backed flood insurance is made available in communities that adopt and enforce flood plain management ordinances to reduce future flood losses. The NFIP is administered by the Federal Insurance Administration, a division of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Applications for flood insurance usually must be accompanied by an NFIP Elevation Certificate, which records a building's key elevations relative to the calculated base flood elevation of the area in which it is located. Insurance agents and underwriters use the measurements provided on the Elevation Certificate to determine the premium charged to property owners for flood insurance coverage. FEMA Mitigation staff use the measurements to determine whether the ground and building are sufficiently above the base flood elevation to exempt the structure from flood insurance requirements.

Why Redesign the Elevation Certificate?
Filling out the Elevation Certificate has not always been easy, judging from comments FEMA has received about the certificate's format and the relevance of the data reported on it in the past. However, the process of identifying and rating flood risks just got easier, thanks to a FEMA task force convened at the end of 1997. Made up of members representing flood plain managers, surveyors and engineers; FEMA Mitigation and FIA staff and representatives from the insurance industry, this task force spent more than a year analyzing, redesigning, testing and revising the Elevation Certificate.

“We've improved the existing form to make it more defined,” explains Jhun de la Cruz, an insurance examiner in the Federal Insurance Administration's Underwriting Branch. “For example, the new form collects more elevation information on a building. Surveyors or engineers still provide all of the elevation measurements that underwriters need to rate a building's susceptibility to flooding, but with the new form they no longer have to be familiar with the rules and regulations of the National Flood Insurance Program to certify their section of the form.”

New Form Discourages Fraud
According to Wendy Lathrop, a land surveyor since 1974 and ACSM's representative to FEMA's Technical Mapping Advisory Council, the design of the old Elevation Certificate not only was confusing, but it also made surveyors vulnerable to certification fraud.

“The information on the front of the old form that the land surveyor filled out was separated from the surveyor's signature, which was on the back. In this day and age, because we have such fabulous photocopying possibilities, it was becoming obvious that we were having problems with fraud. Someone could take the front of one document, photocopy the signature of a surveyor from a different document, and then put them together—making the poor surveyor liable for something that he or she did not do. This is equivalent to forging the surveyor's name.” The surveyor's signature and embossed seal now are located on the same side of the form as the information supplied by the surveyor.

The redesign of the Elevation Certificate addressed another liability issue. “We wanted to make sure that the person with the most appropriate and relevant expertise would be certifying each section of the Elevation Certificate, thereby reducing liability for somebody who shouldn't be doing it,” says Lathrop. “For instance, the old form asked whether or not the structure was in compliance with local flood plain management ordinances. That is not something that the surveyor or engineer filling out the form should have to do. It should be done by the local community official—the person who is most likely to have a proper background in flood plain management ordinances.”

What's New?
For years, the NFIP Elevation Certificate included the certification form itself, followed by two pages of instructions and two pages of building diagrams. Information collected on the form concerned a property's address, location on the current Flood Insurance Rate Map, key elevations and compliance with community ordinances. The form also recorded information about the certifying surveyor, engineer, architect or community official. Eight diagrams served as references for determining the type of building and the required elevations. Much of the information requested on the old certificate had to be inserted by the surveyor, engineer or architect in a general comments section.

Although the new certificate still provides spaces for comments, detailed questions about a property's longitude and latitude, Flood Insurance Rate Map data and survey results have been added. Furthermore, the instructions have been clarified, and the building diagrams have been revised. Another significant change is that the surveyor or engineer is no longer required to determine the reference level (the lowest floor) used for rating. New items have been added to record the source of elevation datum, such as the North American Vertical Datum 1988, used by the certifying surveyor.

As flood maps become digitized and communities expand their flood plain management databases, new information requested on the form about latitude and longitude will allow every link in the flood protection chain to operate more efficiently. “The Elevation Certificate needs to evolve constantly, just as every form does, to keep pace with our changing demands for information and how information is provided,” says Lathrop. “Future changes will probably move along in the same direction in terms of making sure that as technology and the need for specialized information change, we will adapt. Everything changes gradually and this is the first really big change in the Elevation Certificate in several decades. But that doesn't mean that it is finished.”

In addition to a host of flood plain managers, approximately 25 surveyors and surveying firms in different parts of the United States were involved in testing the new form and making recommendations for its improvement. After integrating their comments, as well as those provided by technical engineering and surveying advisors and experts in the insurance industry, the task force revised the Elevation Certificate and its instructions. Final revisions were made, and the redesigned federal form became effective on August 1, 1999. Use of the new certificate will become mandatory on January 1, 2000, if the certification date is on or after that date.

Form Availability
The new Elevation Certificate form and instruction packet are available from the FEMA Distribution Center at 800/480-2520 (ask for FEMA Form 81-31). It is also available via the NFIP website at www.fema.gov/nfip. Training in how to use the new form will be offered at NFIP workshops across the country and in Puerto Rico and through the NFIP's regional offices. Dates and locations for upcoming Elevation Certificate training sessions are available by calling the NFIP's Telephone Response Center at 800/427-4661.

Even those who can not attend an Elevation Certificate training session soon will find the form easier to use, according to Lathrop. “The best educational tool for the form is now the form itself because its instructions were rewritten to clarify how it is to be filled out. We felt that it was important for people to understand more about how the Elevation Certificate fits into the whole National Flood Insurance Program and so we added a little bit about the Program and some further information about why and how the forms are used. Sometimes when you know more about why you are being asked a question, it makes all the difference in the world how you answer it.”

Lynd Morris is a writer with the National Flood Insurance Program.

The National Flood Insurance Program is jointly administered by the Federal Insurance Administration and the Mitigation Directorate, both components of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).