FEMA Flood Zones: San Francisco Bay Area, California, 2001

Source metadata and data available at: https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/3846

The digital Q3 Flood Data are designed to serve FEMA's needs for disaster response activities, National Flood Insurance Program activities, risk a ssessment, and floodplain management. The data are expected to be used for a variety of planning applications including broad-based review for floodplain management, land-use planning, commercial site analysis, insurance target marketing, natural resource/environmental analyses, and real estate development and targeting. Because digital Q3 Flood Data are controlled to the USGS 1:24,000 scale maps, they may not be detailed enough for some uses. The hardcopy Flood Insurance Rate Map or Digital Flood Insurance Rate Map should be used to make official determinations, especially if a property is close to the boundary of the mapped Special Flood Hazard Area. Because of the scale of the digital Q3 Flood Data, it cannot be used to determine absolute delineations of flood risk boundaries. It is especially important to understand the "buffer" that FEMA recommends users apply to the floodplain boundary. The buffer is 250 feet outside of the floodplain boundary line. Users should refer to the official hardcopy map if a site of interest falls in the buffer. See the "Q3 Flood Data Users Guide" and "Q3 Flood Data Specifications" for more information.