This page offers answers to frequently asked questions about OpenFEMA.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
Use the dropdown menu to filter by the type of question, or type in a keyword.
This page offers answers to frequently asked questions about OpenFEMA.
Use the dropdown menu to filter by the type of question, or type in a keyword.
No, even under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process, certain release exemptions still apply. A more thorough description of the specific exemptions and exclusions for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are available here: https://www.dhs.gov/foia-exemptions.
Decisions to withhold or redact information in FOIA requests is adjudicated on a case-by-case basis. Broadly speaking however, redaction and withholding can be permitted where the potential harm to an individual, protected entity, or national security would outweigh the potential benefits of release to the general public.
For the purposes of requesting FEMA Program data via FOIA, this means that records containing privileged or sensitive information are often eligible for redaction prior to release, unless consent to release has been secured by the requestor.
Exceptions do exist. Several files have an irregular update schedule.
Once you understand the basics of the API and its parameters, querying the API is easy and can be done through the browser. We have detailed tutorials in our OpenFEMA GitHub repository.
The Public Assistance Applicants Program Deliveries and the Public Assistance Funded Projects Details datasets provide the FEMA grant amounts related to COVID-19.
FEMA does not offer assistance to small businesses impacted by a presidentially declared disaster. However, the Small Business Administration (SBA), which offers low interest loans for business damages has SBA Disaster Loan data.
The disaster number will relate to the incident. A list of disasters and disaster names are available in the OpenFEMA dataset FEMA Web Disaster Declarations.
Not all "Amount" values are actual payouts. The rental, replacement, and repair amounts are the award amounts. The "Total Approved IHP Amount" field is the Total IA award. The reports for Individuals and Households Program and Housing Assistance Program Data provide this data.
There may be inspector errors, but some high values are legitimate. For instance, values for flood height may include measures for dwelling types of boats. Boat dwellings that have sunk to the bottom of a lake may be recorded as an estimate of the deepest lake depth.
Individual Assistance records are not available at the registration level to protect Personally identifiable information (PII). Geolocation data identifying a specific individual is considered personal information as well. To protect PII, OpenFEMA sets the minimum geographically aggregated values as x >5.
This data is not available in OpenFEMA data and would have to be requested through the Freedom of Information Act or Privacy Act (FOIA).