Transparency
Data & Sources
Insureopedia is built entirely on open, citable data. Here is exactly where every number comes from — and how we use it.
Works created by U.S. federal government agencies are, as a rule, in the public domain — free of copyright and open for anyone to use. Insureopedia is assembled from these public records and from openly licensed frameworks, so every figure on this site can be traced back to its origin.
Primary data sources
| Source | What we use it for | License |
|---|---|---|
| FEMA — National Risk Index | County-level composite risk, Expected Annual Loss, social vulnerability, community resilience, and 18 individual natural hazards. Powers the Hazard Map. | Public Domain |
| OpenFEMA | Federal Disaster Declaration summaries (live) and NFIP flood-claims data. | Public Domain |
| U.S. Census Bureau | Geocoding addresses to counties, and county boundary geometry. | Public Domain |
| USGS | ShakeMap and the National Seismic Hazard Model for earthquake ground-motion. | Public Domain |
| NOAA | Storm events, coastal and severe-weather hazard context. | Public Domain |
| SSA | Period life tables and mortality curves for life & annuity tools. | Public Domain |
| OSHA / BLS | Workplace injury incidence and direct/indirect accident cost data. | Public Domain |
| NIST | SP 800-30 and SP 800-37 Risk Management Framework workflows. | Public Domain |
| Oasis LMF | Open catastrophe-modeling concepts and the Open Exposure Data (OED) schema. | BSD-3-Clause |
Licensing
- Federal public-domain data (FEMA, OpenFEMA, USGS, NOAA, SSA, OSHA, BLS, NIST, Census) carries no copyright and may be freely reused. We nonetheless attribute each source.
- Oasis LMF software and schemas are distributed under the permissive BSD-3-Clause open-source license.
- Base map tiles are © OpenStreetMap contributors, styled by CARTO, used under their respective attribution terms (shown on the map).
- Insureopedia's own content — original explanations, glossary definitions, and interface — is provided for free educational use.
How the Hazard Map works
The map joins two public datasets by county FIPS code:
- Risk values come from FEMA's National Risk Index (Counties). We bundle a curated snapshot so the map loads fast and works reliably.
- County shapes come from U.S. Census cartographic boundaries, simplified for web display.
- Disaster declarations are fetched live from the OpenFEMA API when you request them, so they are always current.
Each county is coloured by its National Risk Index rating — a national percentile class from Very Low to Very High — for whichever metric you select. Ratings, not raw scores, drive the colour so classes stay comparable across counties.
Disclaimer
Educational use only. Insureopedia is a general-reference and learning tool. Nothing here is insurance, financial, actuarial, or legal advice, an offer of coverage, or a substitute for professional judgment. Risk scores are modeled estimates and do not predict outcomes for any specific property or person. Always consult a licensed professional and the original source data before making decisions.
Questions about a figure? Every dataset above links to its official home, where you can inspect the primary record yourself.