Association of State Floodplain Managers

2019 Conference Call for Abstracts

It's time to start pulling together the ASFPM 2019 program (May 19-23, Cleveland, OH) and we need your help! Submit an abstract, or two, to share your flood mitigation story, tool or resource. Go to the conference website and follow instructions for the online submission. The Call for Abstracts seeks a broad range of professionals to submit for 30-minute concurrent sessions and/or 2-4 hour workshops that address issues, problems and solutions associated with managing and communicating flood risk, making communities more resilient and protecting floodplain and fragile natural resources. Additional information and abstract submission. Submissions are due October 31.

2019 Student Paper Competition

Since 2011, the ASFPM Foundation has sponsored a student paper competition open to any full-time, college student enrolled in a floodplain management related field. Three finalists are invited to present their papers at ASFPM's annual national conference, which will be held in Cleveland, OH on May 19-23, 2019. The goals of this program are to encourage student engagement in floodplain management topics and to identify talented individuals with the potential to make lasting contributions to the floodplain management body of knowledge. You can learn more regarding prizes, eligibility, paper requirements and topics of consideration here. Deadline for submission is January 12, 2019.

Reducing Flood Risk 

Best practices and case studies are effective tools to highlight State and local initiatives to reduce flood risks at the local and regional level.  The ASFPM Floodplain Management Best Practices and Case Studies Compendium catalogs best practices and case studies in a searchable format for online viewing; this will increase accessibility and usefulness to the reader.  This project, funded by the ASFPM Foundation, was completed a few months ago and is now ready for prime-time use!

ASFPM’s Flood Science Center collected twenty-five best practices and case studies that comprise the compendium.  This project created a typology that established the means to organize and index case studies associated with best practices.  Sources included the ASFPM’s No Adverse Impact (NAI) How-to-Guide; “The Nature Conservancy’s Naturally Resilient Communities Project;” and the FEMA Cooperating Technical Partners (CTP) mentoring project.

• NAI How-to-Guides: To further ASFPM’s No Adverse Impact™ initiative, ASFPM developed a series of No Adverse Impact How-to-Guides.  These How-to-Guides were developed for each of the Building Blocks in the publication entitled “No Adverse Impact: A Toolkit for Common Sense Floodplain Management.”

• Naturally Resilient Communities: The Nature Conservancy (TNC) contracted with ASFPM to assist in developing a guide and case studies for the mainstreaming of natural infrastructure, such as comprehensive planning, education of developers, relocation of property, the raising of infrastructure, and floodplain regulations, to address coastal and riverine flooding.

• CTP Support: FEMA contracted with ASFPM to help support the Cooperating Technical Partners (CTP).  The CTP Program is a partnership between FEMA and participating NFIP communities, regional agencies, state agencies, tribes, and universities that have the intent and capability to become a more active participant in FEMA's mapping program.  The project involved documenting best practices and providing training, such as automatic engineering tasks.

These best practices and case studies can be important and very useful at the State and local levels in designing programs or projects to reduce their flood risks.  The Best Practices and Case Studies Compendium can be found at the ASFPM Flood Science Center.

Changing Lives and Developing Future Leaders

The Association of State Floodplain Managers is changing lives and developing future leaders who can strengthen our profession and help guide the future of flood-risk management. One major accomplishment this past year was awarding our first Future Leaders Scholarship, which is a two-year scholarship providing up to $25,000 each year for college tuition and expenses to support a rising junior in academic fields related to floodplain management.  The first scholarship recipient is Jesus Mulgado from the University of Arizona. He gave a moving speech at the ASFPM Annual National Conference about how this scholarship made higher education in the floodplain management field financially possible.

About the Organization

The Association of State Floodplain Managers (www.floods.org) began in 1977 as the supporting organization of professionals involved in floodplain management, flood hazard mitigation, flood preparedness and flood warning and recovery. Its mission is to mitigate the losses, costs and human suffering caused by flooding and to promote wise use of the natural and beneficial floodplain functions. Today ASFPM is the premier voice in floodplain management practice and policy throughout the nation. 17,000 national and chapter members represent local, state and federal government agencies, citizen groups, private consulting firms, academia, insurance industry and lenders. ASFPM's influence is expressed through policy and practice changes that impact floodplain management in the U.S. and internationally. ASFPM's goals are simple – help the public and private sectors:

• Reduce the loss of human life and property damage resulting from flooding.
• Preserve the natural and cultural values of floodplains.
• Promote flood mitigation for the prevention of loss and the wise use of floodplains.

• Avoid actions that exacerbate flooding.

To celebrate their 40th Anniversary, ASFPM has created an interactive timeline of significant historical events that have impacted the association and its mission to reduce loss of life and property due to flooding.  

ASFPM also administers the Certified Floodplain Managers (CFM) Program. If you would like more information on CFM certification, please click here.