Even a slight chance of flooding can pose too great a threat to critical facilities and the services they provide to a community. Managers of critical facilities can take this online assessment to identify their facility's potential vulnerabilities to flooding.

Critical facilities serve the community or affect the safety, health, or welfare of the surrounding population, and may include hospitals and other health care facilities, fire and police stations, emergency operations centers, communication and data centers, essential government buildings, and other critical facilities and their contents, machinery, and equipment. In some cases, wastewater treatment plants, water treatment plants, electrical substations, transportation facilities, and buildings such as schools or community centers are considered critical or essential for their community.

The Flood Vulnerability Assessment (FVA) is a set of mostly yes/no and multiple-choice questions, and is designed to assess a one-building critical facility or a site of buildings (up to seven) that function as one critical facility (e.g., a medical campus). To complete the assessment, users must first create a user profile. For useful results, the assessment requires knowledge about the building and where critical systems are located. Additionally, basic engineering knowledge about the building and access to the building's emergency response plans for various conditions are helpful. The assessment usually takes 45 to 90 minutes to complete.

After completing the FVA, users receive a downloadable Facility Risk Summary and Recommendations Report summarizing the most important findings and provide a set of recommendations and/or resources as steps that could be taken to reduce the facility's risk to flooding events.