# A Systematic Revision of the NFIP Claims Hazard Data in Florida for Flood Risk Assessment
## 4 Conclusions  
The NFIP claim data constitute an essential resource for developing, calibrating, and validating a flood risk model. They can be intensively used, for example, in the assessment of the flood outcomes from hazard (i.e., surge, wave and inland flooding) models and in the development process of a set of vulnerability curves. The provided original (especially hazard) fields in NFIP claim data are not always complete or accurate and often missing. In order to determine significant types of meteorological events that can cause flooding, the  
Figure 8: Preliminary creation of 30 zones to be used for Monte Carlo convergence tests. Yellow stars indicate target locations that define the zones. Losses for each zone were based on the analysis of NFIP claim data. authors tackled the revision of the NFIP claim data in Florida filed between 19 July 1975 and 10 January 2014. The hazard fields in the NFIP claim data were systematically revised using existing meteorological and geographical data in Florida. Tropical cyclone events, rainfall maxima, and distance to coast information permitted revisions of the cause of loss when the provided claim loss causes were in clear error or ambiguous. After our revision, the number and paid loss amount of surge claims in Florida increased dramatically, while those of accumulation of rainfall claims decreased. Sample usages of the revised NFIP claim data are presented in this study as well in the analyses of nontropical flood claims, loss convergence, and historical reconstruction of hydrological states. The types of meteorological events that can lead to flooding are varied. For hurricane events, the currently developing FPFLM has both a surge model and an inland flood model that have been implemented and are now being evaluated using the revised NFIP claim data. However, for nonhurricane events, we do not have such models. There are unusual cases, such as the tropical disturbance in southeast Florida in 2000 (2 October 2020-6 October 2000). At that time, there was no tropical cyclone present, but heavy rain from a disturbance caused significant flooding. A tropical storm later developed from this disturbance after it left the region. Based on the NFIP claim data, the damage due to these rainfall events appeared to exceed the flood damage due to Hurricane Andrew (1992), which impacted the same region. Since the event was not a cyclone at that time, we could not model this event. It should be noted that our criteria used for the revision of cause of loss in the current paper were somewhat arbitrary, such as the radius of hurricane influence (700 km), rainfall criteria (25 or 5 mm/day), distance to coast for surge influence (20 km), and surge assignment for hurricane event (<1 km). If these criteria were selected more scientifically, the reliability of revised claim counts and loss amounts might be improved. For example, in lieu of a <1 km rule for surge assignment, we could use Florida DEM surge zones based on NHC SLOSH model runs with FEMA observed flood estimates. If there is still doubt about the revised cause of loss, individual claims should be checked manually with added meteorological and georeferencing information to attain a proper selection of cause of loss. Conceptualization, D.W.S. and S.C.; methodology, D.W.S. and S.C.; software, D.W.S. and B.-M.K. ; validation, D.W.S., S.C. and B.-M.K. ; formal analysis, D.W.S. and S.C.; investigation, B.-M.K. ; resources, S.C. and B.-M.K. ; data curation, D.W.S. ; writing--original draft preparation, D.W.S. ; writing--review and editing, S.C. and B.-M.K. ; visualization, D.W.S. and S.C.; supervision, S.C.; project administration, S.C. and B.-M.K. ; funding acquisition, S.C. and B.-M.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research was funded by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (FLOIR). B.K.