Flood Insurance Practice Test

Special Flood Hazard Area is defined by FEMA as the area with a 1% chance of flooding in any given year, the so-called 100-year floodplain. This means, statistically, about one in a hundred years a flood of that size could occur in that area, though it isn’t a guarantee that a flood happens exactly every century. This boundary is what’s shown on flood maps and is used to determine when flood insurance is required for federally backed loans. The other percentages would correspond to more frequent floods, which is not how the SFHA is defined.