OpenFEMA NFIP Flood Claims & Risk Data Scraper

Export more than 2.7 million privacy-redacted National Flood Insurance Program claim records from the current OpenFEMA API. Results include loss date, flood event, state, county and ZIP geography, payment and damage amounts, coverage, flood zone, property characteristics and approximate coordinates.

The Actor is designed for insurance, mortgage, real-estate, climate-risk, catastrophe modeling and public-policy research. It uses OpenFEMA's current v3 NfipClaims source—not the deprecated frozen v2 endpoint—and requires no FEMA API key.

What can you do with this Actor?

• Analyze historical flood-loss frequency and severity by state, year, county, ZIP or flood event.
• Compare paid amounts, reported damage and insurance coverage.
• Build risk features for property, mortgage, portfolio and catastrophe analytics.
• Study occupancy, residence, rental, basement and building-characteristic patterns.
• Identify communities and flood zones with significant historical claim activity.
• Feed bulk, normalized public records into data warehouses, maps or BI dashboards.

Input

Field	Type	Description
states	string[]	Two-letter state or territory abbreviations.
yearOfLossFrom	integer	Earliest loss year, inclusive.
yearOfLossTo	integer	Latest loss year, inclusive.
floodEventContains	string	Case-insensitive event-name filter.
countyFips	string[]	County FIPS codes.
zipCodes	string[]	Property ZIP codes.
minTotalPaid	number	Minimum combined building, contents and ICC payment.
primaryResidenceOnly	boolean	Keep only primary residences.
rentalPropertiesOnly	boolean	Keep only rental properties.
maxResults	integer	Maximum unique claims, up to 500,000.

Example for material Florida and Texas losses:

{
  "states": ["FL", "TX"],
  "yearOfLossFrom": 2017,
  "yearOfLossTo": 2025,
  "minTotalPaid": 50000,
  "maxResults": 25000
}

Output

Each dataset item represents one redacted NFIP claim.

Field group	Included fields
Identity and time	claimId, loss date, reported year, flood event and as-of date.
Geography	State, county FIPS, ZIP, NFIP community, census tract, flood zone and approximate latitude/longitude.
Money	Building and contents payments, ICC payment, combined totalPaid, damage amounts and coverage amounts.
Property	Occupancy, primary residence, rental, basement, floors, construction date, condominium and building descriptions.
Risk	Rated and current flood zone, base flood elevation and elevation differences when available.
Lineage	OpenFEMA source URL and export timestamp.

{
  "claimId": "9876543",
  "dateOfLoss": "2017-08-27",
  "floodEvent": "HURRICANE HARVEY",
  "state": "TX",
  "countyFips": "48201",
  "zipCode": "77084",
  "currentFloodZone": "AE",
  "totalPaid": 86420.55,
  "buildingDamageAmount": 92000,
  "primaryResidence": true,
  "rentalProperty": false,
  "latitude": 29.8,
  "longitude": -95.6
}

Privacy and interpretation

FEMA intentionally anonymizes or generalizes the public records. Coordinates are approximate and are not property-level locations; personally identifying policyholder information is not included. Dollar fields reflect what FEMA publishes and can include nulls, zeroes, caps, adjustments or program-specific rules. Never use a single historical claim as the sole basis for underwriting, lending or an individual property decision.

Scaling and data quality

The Actor pushes records in batches, paginates the official API and deduplicates by claim ID. Server-side filters reduce transfer size for state, year, county and ZIP selections. Event-name and calculated total-payment filters run on normalized results. For broad filters with a high payment threshold, the Actor may scan more source records than it ultimately saves.

Large exports can be scheduled to produce repeatable portfolio snapshots. Use claimId for downstream deduplication and retain asOfDate to understand source currency.

Integrations and API

Download results as JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel, XML or RSS. Connect runs to schedules, webhooks, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, databases or cloud ETL. The Actor is callable through the Apify REST API and official clients.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~openfema-nfip-flood-claims-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"states":["LA"],"yearOfLossFrom":2020,"maxResults":10000}'

Apify MCP can expose it as a structured flood-risk research tool for AI workflows.

FAQ

Does it use the deprecated FEMA API? No. It uses the current OpenFEMA v3 NFIP claims endpoint.

How many claims are available? The source currently contains more than 2.7 million records and changes over time.

Does it need an API key? No.

Are exact property locations included? No. Public geography is anonymized or generalized.

What is totalPaid? The Actor-calculated sum of building, contents and increased-cost-of-compliance payments when present.

Why can damage differ from payment? Damage, coverage and program payment are separate concepts and may be affected by policy terms.

Can I filter Hurricane Harvey or another named event? Yes, use floodEventContains; source naming may vary.

Can I request all 2.7 million in one run? A run is capped at 500,000 items. Split full-history work by state or year.

Is this an underwriting decision engine? No. It is a public-data extraction and normalization tool.

Responsible use

This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by FEMA or the NFIP. Use the data in accordance with OpenFEMA terms and applicable law. Verify critical risk and financial decisions with authoritative, current sources.

Changelog

2026-08-04

• Initial release on the current OpenFEMA v3 NfipClaims dataset.
• Added state, loss-year, event, county, ZIP, payment and property filters.
• Added normalized claim, payment, damage, coverage, risk and property fields.
• Validated high-volume pagination, stable claim-ID deduplication and source lineage.