Microproduct data guidebeginner

OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations

Federal disaster declarations, designated areas, incident periods, and authorized programs for building local emergency and recovery trackers.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Small · ≤0.1 GB
Formats
JSON, CSV, JSON Lines, Parquet
Access
API or Download
API key
Not required
Provider
Federal Emergency Management Agency
Updates
Near real time
Data terms
OpenFEMA Terms and Conditions

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

OpenFEMA records federal disaster declarations, incident periods, designated areas, and declared assistance programs. Start with recent declarations for one state. A declaration records federal action; it does not measure local damage, event severity, or an individual's eligibility for assistance.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • A two-letter U.S. state or territory code
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Read the dataset description and OpenFEMA terms before using the API.
  2. 2.Query the current v2 endpoint for a bounded set of declarations in one state.
  3. 3.Preserve disaster numbers, designated areas, and program flags when presenting results.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://www.fema.gov/api/open/v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries",
    params={
        "$filter": "state eq 'FL'",
        "$orderby": "declarationDate desc",
        "$top": 100,
    },
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
declarations = pd.DataFrame(response.json()["DisasterDeclarationsSummaries"])
declarations["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(declarations[["disasterNumber", "declarationDate", "incidentType", "designatedArea"]].head())
4

Test a useful signal

Track recent declarations for one state

Summarize which incident types and designated areas appear in the latest declarations.

  1. 01Sort the bounded response by declaration date and deduplicate disaster-number and designated-area pairs.
  2. 02Count recent declarations by incident type and list the assistance programs declared for each event.
  3. 03Explain why declaration counts cannot be used as direct measures of damage, severity, or personal eligibility.

Dataset details

Federal Emergency Management Agency is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-11. Temporal coverage: 1953-present.

Domains

Emergency ManagementDisaster Recovery

Data types

Event DataGeospatialTabular

Tasks

Disaster MonitoringAlertingCommunity Comparison

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONCSVJSON LinesParquet

Provider

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Data terms

OpenFEMA Terms and Conditions