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FEMA Best Practices for Capturing High-Quality Photos

The Applicant provides FEMA with not only pre-disaster photos, but also damage-specific photos after an event occurs. To provide the best photos to FEMA an Applicant should follow these best practices:

  • Take photos from multiple angles. 
  • Use landmarks for perspective. 
  • Include a measuring tool with pictures to provide scale. 
  • Ensure there is sufficient lighting to allow others to see damage accurately. 
  • Attempt to take photos on the inside of culverts. 
  • Maintain a descriptive list of the photos, including latitude and longitude coordinates and perspective to use as a reference. 

The information above is from FEMA's IS-1006: Documenting Disaster Damage and Developing Project Files course.