Fema Nfhl MCP server

@pipeworx/fema-nfhl

FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer — the authoritative digital flood map. Effective FIRM flood hazard zones, base flood elevations, floodways, levees, cross-sections, LOMRs and LOMAs, the FIRM panel index and political jurisdictions, served as a public ArcGIS REST MapServer.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1679+ live data sources.

Tools

FIRM flood zone at a coordinate: zone code and subtype, Special Flood Hazard Area flag, static BFE, governing DFIRM id, plus nearby BFE lines.

• nfhlfloodzoneatpoint(latitude, longitude, include_bfe?) — the effective

any NFHL layer by WHERE clause and optional envelope.

• nfhlquery(layerid, where?, bbox?, outfields?, limit?, offset?, orderby?, return_geometry?) —

that matter.

• nfhl_layers(filter?) — every layer with a plain-English guide to the ones

Auth

Keyless.

Data sources

lines), 16 SBFE, 1 SLOMR, 34 SLOMA, 3 SFIRMPAN, 23 SLEVEE, 0 NFHL Availability.

• — the MapServer.
• Layer 28 SFLDHAZAR (flood hazard zones), 27 SFLDHAZLN (boundary

Different API from the openfema pack. openfema serves the OpenFEMA tabular datasets — disaster declarations, individual and public assistance, NFIP claims and policies. This pack serves the geospatial flood map, which OpenFEMA cannot answer. Pair them: NFHL for the zone, openfema for the claims and declaration history of the county it sits in.

Traps

not an elevation. This pack returns null for it.

• STATIC_BFE is -9999 where no base flood elevation applies — a sentinel,

Flood Hazard Area". FLD_ZONE alone does not: Zone X has two subtypes and one of them is the 0.2% annual chance (500-year) floodplain.

• SFHATF ('T'/'F' as strings**) is what answers "is this a Special

mapped returns zero features, which means "not mapped", not "no flood risk". nfhlfloodzoneatpoint says so explicitly rather than returning an empty array that reads as a clean all-clear. Layer 0 (NFHL Availability) tells you which is which.

• NFHL coverage is not national. A community that has never been digitally

• Identifier fields are strings: DFIRM_ID='48201C', not 48201C.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fema-nfhl": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/fema-nfhl/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/fema-nfhl/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — askpipeworx, discovertools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1679+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.