Association of State Floodplain Managers

2019 Conference 

The ASFPM annual conference is recognized as the most important floodplain conference in the United States year after year. With more than 120 speakers and 1,200 participants, they are the national conferences all community, state and federal floodplain managers plan to attend. And because of that, many of the most important consulting firms and product vendors associated with floodplain management attend.

In recent years, the attendance has had about an equal number of private, local, state and federal participants from all over the U.S. and several foreign countries.

ASFPM also sponsors and co-sponsors major regional and topical conferences. Every year, there are numerous conferences and workshops of vital interest to all segments of our membership. Go to Conference Website

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.