FEMA NRI Data API

What the FEMA National Risk Index measures

The FEMA National Risk Index (NRI) is a dataset and scoring model that estimates natural hazard risk for every county in the continental United States. FEMA defines risk as a function of three components:

• Expected Annual Loss (EAL) — the modeled dollar value of losses expected per year from each hazard, based on historical event frequency, severity, and exposed asset values
• Social Vulnerability (SOVI) — a composite index of demographic factors (poverty, age, disability, language isolation) that affect a community's ability to cope with and recover from disasters
• Community Resilience (RESL) — a composite of factors that reduce risk: strong local economy, high housing quality, civic engagement, and infrastructure quality

The composite NRI risk score combines all three into a single 0–100 percentile score — higher means higher risk relative to all other U.S. counties. Each of the 17 hazard types also gets its own risk score, EAL, and Annualized Loss Rate (ALR).

The 17 NRI hazard types

For agricultural use cases, the most relevant hazards are drought, inland flooding, hail, tornado, strong wind, and heat wave. Each is returned as a nested object with its own risk score, rating, EAL, and ALR.

Key fields and scores

Composite county scores

Per-hazard fields (returned for each of 17 hazards)

Use cases

Agricultural underwriting: baseline structural hazard exposure

NRI scores are the structural complement to real-time weather signals. Where USDM drought category tells you what's happening right now, the NRI drought risk score tells you how frequently and severely drought has historically affected that county relative to the rest of the country. A county with NRI drought risk rating "Very High" is structurally different from one rated "Relatively Low" — even if both are in D2 drought today.

For crop insurance underwriting, combine agri_value_usd with the per-hazard EAL to estimate expected loss as a percentage of insured value. For counties with limited RMA claims history, NRI provides an independent structural exposure estimate to anchor actuarial assumptions.

Agricultural lending: multi-hazard collateral risk

Farm loan collateral is exposed to multiple hazard types simultaneously — a Plains wheat operation faces drought, hail, and tornado risk. The NRI gives lenders a single API call that returns all relevant hazard scores for a county: drought EAL for soil moisture context, hail and tornado risk for above-ground crop damage, and flood risk for low-lying operations. Use alongside the portfolio endpoint to build a multi-hazard risk profile for every county in a loan book.

Site selection and expansion planning

Agribusiness operations, grain elevators, and input suppliers expanding into new geographies use NRI to screen counties before committing capital. A county's composite risk score, SOVI (community vulnerability), and RESL (resilience) together signal not just hazard frequency but how well the local community recovers from events — which affects supply chain reliability and workforce stability.

Climate risk disclosure

SEC climate disclosure rules and TCFD frameworks require companies to identify and quantify county-level physical hazard exposure for material facilities and operations. NRI scores are FEMA's authoritative county-level physical risk metric — appropriate for regulatory disclosure as a federal government data source. R2Data2 makes it straightforward to pull NRI scores for every county where a company has operations.

API endpoint

NRI data is served from a single endpoint. All tiers can access NRI scores; one request per county.

# NRI risk scores for Adair County, Iowa (FIPS 19001)
curl https://r2data2.com/nri/county/19001 \
  -H "X-API-Key: agr_your_key_here"

{
  "fips": "19001",
  "population": 7152,
  "building_value_usd": 412800000,
  "agri_value_usd": 284500000,
  "area_sqmi": 574.3,
  "risk_score": 22.4,
  "risk_rating": "Relatively High",
  "eal_score": 19.1,
  "eal_rating": "Relatively Moderate",
  "eal_total_usd": 1820400,
  "sovi_score": 44.7,
  "sovi_rating": "Relatively Moderate",
  "resl_score": 31.2,
  "resl_rating": "Relatively Low",
  "drought": {
    "risk_score": 31.7,
    "risk_rating": "High",
    "eal_usd": 940200,
    "alr": 0.0033
  },
  "hail": {
    "risk_score": 14.2,
    "risk_rating": "Relatively Moderate",
    "eal_usd": 318700,
    "alr": 0.0011
  },
  "tornado": {
    "risk_score": 28.9,
    "risk_rating": "Relatively High",
    "eal_usd": 204100,
    "alr": 0.0007
  },
  "inland_flooding": {
    "risk_score": 8.3,
    "risk_rating": "Relatively Low",
    "eal_usd": 89400,
    "alr": 0.0003
  }
}

The response includes all 17 hazard objects. Hazards not applicable to the county (e.g., tsunami for an inland county) are returned as null. See the Data Dictionary for the complete field reference and API Docs for interactive testing.

Frequently asked questions