Mississippi Emergency Management Agency

Participation in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is central to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency’s (MEMA) mission of reducing flood losses and preserving natural floodplain functions - across day-to-day operations and in the wake of severe weather. Led by State NFIP Coordinator DiMaya Randle, the state’s five-person floodplain management team plays a vital role in this effort. In addition to ongoing outreach and training, the team provides expertise in Substantial Damage Estimates (SDEs), Preliminary Damage Assessments (PDAs), and Community Assistance Visits (CAVs). With more than 60 audits, over 30 CACs, and frequent post-disaster assessments each year, the team remains in constant motion, working directly with communities to strengthen resilience and support recovery.

Staffing shortages and manual, paper-based recording previously added challenges to the team’s workflows. Field data collection often relied on outdated tools, inefficient mapping, and time-consuming reporting processes.

Transforming Community Assistance Visits

Forerunner has become a key asset for the team during routine Community Assistance Visits, enhancing both efficiency and clarity. These visits are essential to ensuring community compliance with the National Flood Insurance Program, but they have historically been time-consuming and administratively demanding. Before Forerunner, the team relied on paper-based methods and laborious post-visit reporting. Identifying properties was often an exercise in guesswork.

Now in the field, the team uses Forerunner’s parcel-based interface to record property details, flag potential issues, and capture field notes. Since all data is centralized, the team no longer needs to transcribe notes, build spreadsheets, or assemble reports manually.

By leveraging Forerunner, MEMA’s team has significantly streamlined the CAV process, from site visit coordination to efficient post-visit documentation. Forerunner has not only accelerated its workflows but also enhanced consistency and organization across visits.

Scaling Substantial Damage Estimate and Preliminary Damage Assesments with the Forerunner Mobile App

Outside of the team’s routine “blue-sky” activities, the state also supports post-disaster workflows. Substantial Damage Estimates are one of the most resource-intensive responsibilities the MEMA floodplain team supports. The assessments are crucial for determining floodplain compliance and guiding long-term mitigation strategies; however, they can be challenging for local communities to manage independently. When needed, the team is brought in to assist, especially when assessments involve flood-prone properties. In some cases, they found themselves performing over 100 SDEs, often in areas with limited internet access and using tools that would crash or overheat in the field.

MEMA used the Forerunner mobile app to conduct assessments. The team’s time spent per structure dropped from 20 minutes to under ten minutes. Overall, Forerunner helped the team reclaim an entire workweek’s worth of time in the inspection process. The mobile app’s offline capabilities helped them to work uninterrupted, even in rural areas. For the first time, the team could complete detailed assessments quickly, accurately, and with confidence that the data would be stored, accessible, and used later.

The value of Forerunner became even more apparent when a series of tornadoes swept across Mississippi in March 2025. The damage was widespread, spanning multiple regions across the state. With new specialists still onboarding, the floodplain team’s capacity was stretched thin. Forerunner’s multi-layered mapping functionality helped the team assess more structures than previously possible.

A Forward-Looking Vision for Workflow Modernization

Forerunner is not just a tool for MEMA’s floodplain team; it’s a long-term partner in the state’s modernization efforts. Mississippi is now expanding its use of Forerunner across multiple workflows.The team will implement AI-generated letters to reduce the administrative burden of compliance follow-ups – a process that historically required significant staff time and precision. By using the data collected in Forerunner to automatically generate formal notices, the team expects to bolster the documentation her team produces, especially during CAVs.

In parallel, the floodplain team is beginning to provide support to MEMA’s grants department to better align their floodplain management data with structures undergoing mitigation projects through the Flood Mitigation Assistance Grant (FMA). The floodplain team wants to take advantage of Forerunner’s ability to house floodplain datasets, add custom warnings, and track property statuses to quickly review compliance information and have a holistic snapshot of floodplain management and mitigation at a property and community-level.

The ability to manage and integrate additional datasets has opened new doors for coordination across other departments in the state. MEMA’s floodplain team is exploring additional data integrations and collaborations, such as hosting Base Level Engineering mapping to get a clear snapshot of flood risk all in one place.

Forerunner is honored to support the critical work of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency while helping drive efficiency, streamline operations, and bolster resilience across the state.