riskbycounty

FEMA NRI v1.20 Methodology

The source and deterministic display rules behind RiskByCounty's county pages.

Frozen source

Dataset
FEMA NRI v1.20
Release
December 2025
Source rows
3,232

RiskByCounty uses the county table from FEMA National Risk Index v1.20. The refresh pipeline verifies the FEMA archive and extracted source files against frozen SHA-256 values before producing the RiskByCounty-only county artifact.

FEMA National Risk Index documentation →

Score and rating fields

RiskByCounty labelFEMA field
NRI score (0–100 relative scale)RISK_SCORE
Official FEMA county ratingRISK_RATNG

RiskByCounty preserves FEMA's score and official county rating. It does not convert the score into a percentage, create new rating bands, or synthesize a FEMA state score or state rating. State means are explicitly labeled arithmetic summaries of available county scores and are not weighted by residents.

Selected hazard display

FEMA's composite covers 18 hazard categories. RiskByCounty displays five selected categories out of those 18; the selection is not described as complete coverage.

Flood
Higher of FEMA Coastal Flooding and Inland Flooding NRI scores. Both source values are disclosed on county pages.
Wildfire
FEMA Wildfire NRI score.
Tornado
FEMA Tornado NRI score.
Earthquake
FEMA Earthquake NRI score.
Hurricane
FEMA Hurricane NRI score.

Interpretation boundary

The displayed values are county-level, unitless relative planning indices. RiskByCounty reports source fields and deterministic transformations only. Missing FEMA values remain visibly unavailable rather than being estimated.