Without community oversight of building activities in the floodplain, the best efforts of some to reduce flood losses could be undermined or nullified by the careless building of others. Unless the community as a whole is practicing adequate flood hazard mitigation, the potential for loss cannot be reduced sufficiently to affect disaster relief costs. Insurance rates also would reflect the probable higher losses that would result without local floodplain management enforcement activities. Community participation in the NFIP is voluntary. Each identified flood-prone community must assess its flood hazard and determine whether flood insurance and floodplain management would benefit the community's residents and economy.
Some states require NFIP participation as part of their state floodplain management program.
The emergency program is the initial phase of a community's participation in the NFIP and is designed to provide a limited amount of insurance at federally subsidized rates prior to the effective date of the community's initial Flood Insurance Rate Map. A community participating in the emergency program is provided with a Flood Hazard Boundary Map and is required to adopt limited measures aimed at control of the future use of its floodplains. The regular program is the phase of a community's participation in the NFIP when more comprehensive floodplain management requirements are imposed and higher amounts of insurance are available based on risk zones and elevations determined in the flood insurance study of the community. The Flood Insurance Rate Map is used in this phase of NFIP participation. Probation is the formal notification to a community that its floodplain management program compliance does not meet NFIP criteria.