Property Atlas

County hazard profile

Cortland, NY

New York · pop. 46,796 · FIPS 36023

Relatively Low
FEMA risk rating · RATING
Riverine Flooding
dominant hazard
$17M
modeled expected annual loss/yr

Expected annual loss · all 3,232 U.S. counties

among the lowest nationally

national median $15M/yr Cortland $17M

A real dollar distribution: most counties sit far below a handful of high-exposure ones. A FEMA model of annual loss, not a record of disasters.

FEMA national percentile scores

FEMA/CDC score each county 0–100 against all others — the score is the national rank (RATING). Higher risk and vulnerability are worse; higher resilience is better.

FEMA risk indexRelatively Low 51.24/100
national median ~50 near the national middle (51st percentile)
Social vulnerabilityRelatively Low 37.21/100
national median ~50 lower than most counties (37th percentile)
Community resilienceVery High 86.7/100
national median ~50 higher than 87% of counties

Recorded · NFIP flood claims RECORDED

Realized flood losses in Cortland

The National Flood Insurance Program has paid 357 flood-insurance claims totaling $3.4M in Cortland since 1979. The costliest year was 2005 ($1.2M paid).

Flood-insurance dollars paid by year of loss

1979: $24,251 paid 1981: $85,914 paid 1984: $375 paid 1986: $0 paid 1988: $0 paid 1990: $0 paid 1993: $28,026 paid 1994: $1,406 paid 1996: $579,671 paid 1998: $0 paid 2001: $0 paid 2003: $0 paid 2004: $9,244 paid 2005: $1,196,937 paid 2006: $104,542 paid 2007: $0 paid 2009: $3,813 paid 2010: $439,889 paid 2011: $133,539 paid 2013: $257,495 paid 2015: $0 paid 2017: $551,738 paid 2019: $6,884 paid 2020: $11,780 paid 2021: $2,008 paid 2026: $0 paid 2005 · $1.2M 1979 2026
$3.4M
total paid
$9,629
average claim
$506K
largest single claim
67%
in high-risk flood zones (A/V)

RECORDED — these are actual paid NFIP claims (a redacted census from OpenFEMA), not a model. They are the realized counterpart to the FEMA risk score above: one is what happened and got paid, the other is what a model predicts.

Scope: these are flood-insurance claims, so they undercount flooding where owners were uninsured — read this as "what NFIP paid here," not "every flood." County-level totals, not a per-property or per-address verdict. Verify a specific address and buy coverage at FloodSmart.gov; the underlying data is OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Claims.

What these figures mean

  • RATING — the FEMA risk score, expected loss, social vulnerability, and resilience are FEMA/CDC models, not records of disasters that happened. The 0–100 scores are already national percentiles.
  • MEASURED — population is a recorded census figure.
  • COMPUTED — the county's rank within the dollar-loss distribution is our placement over the 3,232 counties.
  • CONTEXT — the note below is framing, not a measurement.

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What this is — and is not

This is FEMA/CDC modeled hazard exposure for Cortland, NY and where it ranks among U.S. counties. It is not a verdict on whether Cortland is a good or bad place to live — hazard exposure is not place quality, and a county can't opt out of its geography. It is not a per-property or per-address risk assessment, not a prediction of any specific disaster, and not insurance advice. For site-specific risk use a per-property assessment; for the underlying model see FEMA National Risk Index.