Extracting data from flood certifications
Flood determination vendors complete FEMA's Standard Flood Hazard Determination Form for every federally backed mortgage, one standard layout filled by each vendor's system. Lenders receive one for every loan in the pipeline, as a PDF delivered to the loan origination system.
Closing needs the flood zone, the special flood hazard area answer, the NFIP community and the map panel. A yes on the hazard area question makes flood insurance a condition of the loan, and the lender tracks the coverage for its life.
What makes flood certifications hard
The answer is a checkbox
Whether the building sits in a special flood hazard area is a YES or NO mark, alongside checkboxes for program type and insurance availability.
Short codes carry the answer
The flood zone, community number and map panel are short codes, such as zone AE, each beside a long printed caption.
A dense ruled form
Lettered sections and numbered boxes pack loan, community, map and determination details into one tightly ruled page of small type.
Parse, extract, verify
Parse
Parse turns the document into reading-order Markdown and a hierarchy of blocks (text, tables, figures), and grounds each block to its exact location on the page.
Extract
You define the fields in a JSON schema, and Extract returns their values in a consistent, structured format, each linked back to where it appears in the Markdown.
Verify
Each value links back to where it appears, down to the character range in the Markdown, and the page and bounding box in the source document, so every result can be verified.
One flood certification, end to end
About this document: A completed FEMA Standard Flood Hazard Determination Form, prepared by a flood determination vendor for a residential mortgage. Three portrait pages: the determination form, a fee slip and the borrower notice with its applicable box checked. Page 1 is featured. Every borrower detail and identifier was replaced with stand-ins.
Processing objective: The objective is to read the determination itself. It names the community the property sits in, its flood zone, whether it lies in a special flood hazard area and when that was determined. Each value grounds to its own numbered box of the form.
Demonstration fields: NFIP community, NFIP community number, Flood zone, In special flood hazard area, Date of determination
The document
3 of 3 pages
Page 1shown below
Page 2
Page 3
Where each value came from
nfip_community.community_name
{
"value": "JACKSON, TOWNSHIP OF",
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 1189,
"start": 1143
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.02851,
"ymin": 0.30056,
"xmax": 0.34153,
"ymax": 0.3337
}
}nfip_community.community_number
{
"value": "340375",
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 1294,
"start": 1260
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.67765,
"ymin": 0.3006,
"xmax": 0.97095,
"ymax": 0.33371
}
}nfip_map.flood_zone
{
"value": "X",
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 1814,
"start": 1434
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.02868,
"ymin": 0.35639,
"xmax": 0.9714,
"ymax": 0.44144
}
}in_special_flood_hazard_area
{
"value": "NO",
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 2757,
"start": 2397
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.02914,
"ymin": 0.57989,
"xmax": 0.97074,
"ymax": 0.63384
}
}determination_date
{
"value": "September 05, 2023",
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 4084,
"start": 4066
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.75401,
"ymin": 0.89378,
"xmax": 0.97062,
"ymax": 0.91147
}
}How to try it yourself
Everything on this page is reproducible. The sample, its schema, and the Parse and Extract API outputs are published. You can repeat the same two calls from whichever surface you already build on.
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Documents into data
Accurate
The best accuracy on the difficult documents other tools get wrong, such as messy scans, complicated tables, checkboxes and handwriting.
Auditable
Every answer cites its sources. Values come back with an audit trail (page, bounding box, character range) so a human can review them.
Agentic
Applies multi-step reasoning, and plans before it acts. Handles documents it has never seen before and adapts to variations.
API-first
Composable APIs that drop into any tech stack and can be called from anywhere. Easy to build on and embed in your pipelines and products.
Affordable
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Built for high-volume, high-throughput production
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