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Welcome to the Public Review Summary for Revised Draft of Data Capture Standards (DCS)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has developed a revised draft specification for the DCS – Appendix N of FEMA's Guidelines and Specifications for Flood Hazard Mapping Partners. Based on the feedback describing difficulty of implementing the existing specification, FEMA has attempted to produce a new version that is simpler and better documented. FEMA believes there will be significant savings and better archiving of study data with the new strategy and data structure implemented by the new version of the DCS. The new specification also contains guidance for collecting scoping, base map, coastal, alluvial fan, redelineation, and digital conversion technical data not previously referenced in the DCS. FEMA will be implementing the new DCS, in coordination with mapping partners, immediately on some existing and future task orders.

The new version of the DCS is not yet complete—it is a work in progress. FEMA seeks your input to address potential ambiguity or confusion in this version. To ease the impact on projects implementing the new specification, FEMA will provide an enhanced level of support through the National Service Provider (NSP) to address questions that arise, will maintain an online discussion forum that allows mapping partners to post questions and comments, and will allow the NSP and FEMA to provide answers and clarifications.

In addition to the new version of the DCS, data schemas for use in submitting DCS-compliant deliverables have also been developed and provided for review. These documents are as follows:

The DCS documents will be available for public review and comment through mid-December 2008. FEMA encourages public comment from all interested parties regarding the feasibility of implementing the proposed specifications, the utility and completeness of the finished product proposed, and the usability of the DCS document itself and associated data submittal schemas.

FEMA will provide enhanced support through mid-December 2008. All questions, comments, and answers collected will be integrated into a final specification.

In addition to the changes described above, the revised version of the DCS attempts to consolidate the DCS deliverables and the Technical Support Data Notebook (TSDN) to reduce the overlapping requirements for mapping partners. To ensure that FEMA retains complete documentation of studies, all FEMA-contracted studies must comply with either the existing or the revised draft DCS and will continue to require the TSDN as a final deliverable at the end of the project. The submittal of the TSDN requirement will continue until the revised DCS is finalized.

A digest of common questions and the answers will be published here periodically for users interested in a summary. The topic areas from the forum are listed below. Please click on your area of interest for review of information and its status. A copy of the revised draft DCS and associated data submittal schemas are also available for review.

Summary of Comments and Comment Resolution

To review summary of comments submitted to DHS Interactive please follow the link below for your topic of interest. Resolutions to comments are also provided under these topic areas.


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Last Modified: Wednesday, 10-Mar-2010 10:03:22 EST