rivers and river basins, not county boundaries. However, eventually the new maps will all be available by county. Once the initial data collection is finished, in 2006, the state plans to update the maps routinely thereafter.

The program is being done in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), which has federal responsibility for flood insurance mapping. Under normal conditions, FEMA’s budget would permit remapping only one of North Carolina’s 100 counties each year; taking 100 years to map the entire state would create an untenable economic situation for a state that is subject to recurrent hurricane and flood damage. Under a new agreement, however, FEMA has assigned responsibility for flood mapping in North Carolina to the state, making it the first cooperating technical state under FEMA’s Cooperating Technical Community partnership program. FEMA has agreed to match state funding of the mapping program.⁸

North Carolina is benefiting in many ways from its remote-sensing-based flood mapping program. The DFIRM maps will be available to the public on the Internet, along with flood forecasts and inundation projections, in a format that is fully comparable across county boundaries. Earlier flood maps stopped at the county boundaries. A statewide GIS group, the Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, is obtaining memoranda of understanding from counties to establish a basis for sharing data across counties and municipalities. This will permit the state to incorporate existing spatial information in DFIRM maps as needed.

The mapping program will save money for the state. The USGS did a cost-benefit analysis of the likely impact of the DFIRM program in North Carolina and concluded that the state would gain $3.35 for each dollar spent on mapping and would lose about $57 million each year that went by without the maps.⁹ These figures, together with the losses suffered as a result of Hurricane Floyd, helped state officials to recognize the financial costs of inaction and contributed to their willingness to move ahead with this program. But the North Carolina DFIRM maps will have other uses in the state as well. For example, flood maps can be overlayed with parcel tax maps, making it possible not only to model future flood impacts but also to use the DFIRM maps for community planning and development.

Another advantage of the North Carolina remote sensing mapping program is that it is based on a budgetary and institutional structure that anticipates mov

Front Matter (R1-R14)

Executive Summary (1-7)

1. Introduction (8-15)

2. Public Sector Applications of Remote Sensing Data (16-37)

3. Getting Started in Remote Sensing: Common Barriers and Bottlenecks (38-49)

4. Beyond State and Local Government (50-61)

5. Findings and Recommendations (62-70)

Appendix A: Transforming Remote Sensing Data into Information and Applications, Executive Summary (71-78)

Appendix B: Biographical Information on Steering Committee Members, Workshop Speakers, and Panelists (79-89)

Appendix C: Workshop Agenda and Participants (90-95)

Appendix D: Acronyms (96-97)