Practical field survey operations for flood insurance rate maps

The U.S. Geological Survey assists the Federal Emergency Management Agency in its mission to identify flood hazards and zones for risk premiums for communities nationwide, by creating flood insurance rate maps through updating hydraulic models that use river geometry data. The data collected consist of elevations of river channels, banks, and structures, such as bridges, dams, and weirs that can affect flow. To account for the model complexity of river structure hydraulics and the fidelity between river channel and structure geometry, two distinct standards for collecting geometry data are presented, both using global navigation satellite system real-time network surveying. This method is adapted from U.S. Geological Survey manuals and is foundational in hydraulic surveying for flood insurance rate maps.