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III1Mflil;.i MAP REVISIONS AND UPDATING To provide accurate assessments of flood risk for floodplain manage- ment and insurance purposes, NFl P maps must present flood hazard information that is correct and up-to-date. Because this information is subject to change, FEMA has developed the Map Revisions process, under which communities may request that effective FHBMs and FIRMs be revised to incorporate new or corrected flooding information, A. Background The Information depicted on effective FEMA maps may be revised by physical revision of the map or by Letter of Map Revision (LOMR), A physical map revision involves revising and printing the individual map panels affected by the requested changes, When NFIP maps are revised by LOMR, the changes made to the maps are described in the LOMR; revised map panels are not printed, Because of the costs involved in printing new map panels, FEMA generally revises maps physically only when it is necessary to show changes involving a land area of significant size or increased flood hazards (new or enlarged SFHA's or higher BFE's), To make other types of map changes, FEMA usually issues LOMR's. LOMR's may be used to make many types of map changes, but are especially well suited to changes that involve only small areas within a community, particularly those involving individual structures and parcels of undeveloped land, Therefore, a LOMR may be issued, if warranted, to remove structures and legally described parcels of undeveloped land from the Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA), Although changes to any of the information shown on an effective NFIP map may be made, FEMA generally will not revise an effective map unless the changes involve flooding information, Requests for changes that involve other information such as roads, road names, or community boundaries will usually be kept on file and addressed if a revision becomes necessary as a result of a request for more significant changes, B. Cost for Conditional Letters Conditional revisions can also be made under the Map Revisions process, Communities, developers, and property owners often undertake improvement projects intended to reduce the flood hazard in speCific areas within their communities and usually want FEMA to recognize the effects of these projects and eventually to credit the projects with pro- viding some degree of flood protection, Similarly, property owners and developers who intend to construct houses or other buildings in the 100-year floodplain usually must prove to lending institutions and local officials that these structures will be above the Base Flood Elevation (BFE), It has become common practice, therefore, for those who are planning such projects or construction to submit design plans and other engineering data to FEMA and request that FEMA evaluate them, FEMA responses to such requests describe the changes that may eventually be mad" to the effective map and are called Conditional LOMR's. These conditional LOMR's give the proponents of the project some assurance that FEMA will ultimately recognize the change in a floodplain when construction is complete, 23