The New York State Floodplain and Stormwater Managers Association (NYSFSMA) was pleased to unveil their completed FEMA Elevation Certificate Diagram 3D models—constructed entirely from Legos! Anyone who has worked with FEMA Elevation Certificates (ECs) knows that determining what diagram number a particular building is can be difficult. Translating the two-dimensional drawing in the EC instructions to a three-dimensional building in the real world often leaves even the savviest of surveyors scratching their heads. Many in the floodplain management community thought there had to be a better way.

Steve Samuelson, a National Flood Insurance Program Specialist at the Kansas Department of Agriculture (now retired), created the first iteration of a three-dimensional EC model. You can watch a video of Steve and his models on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO6K5eLNrbs). While this model was a great improvement over the paper diagrams found in the EC, there were still some diagrams that were not fully represented. NYSFSMA board member, Bill Nechamen, shared Steve’s video with other members of the NYSFSMA board. Board member and current Vice-Chair, Brent Gotsch, became inspired and talked about this with his then coworker at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County, Matt Savatgy. Matt has a background in youth education and when his kids were young, they often played with Legos. When his kids grew up, Matt continued to enjoy Legos himself and used them in his youth environmental education classes. Matt thought it could be possible to create the diagrams using Legos. With Brent’s help, Matt sketched out the diagrams and built a prototype model for Cornell Cooperative Extension. This prototype was shared with NYSFSMA who provided some feedback on how to make it more accurate.

With a generous grant from the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) Foundation, Matt was then commissioned by NYSFSMA to create a model of their own that could be taken to floodplain-related events in New York state and shared with those doing education on ECs. In addition to designing and making the model, Matt also glued the bricks together to help keep them from coming apart during transport. Creating the model took 120 hours and required 60 tubes of super glue. Over 12,000 Lego bricks were used to create the models. The Lego bricks were obtained from off-the-shelf sets and from online sites.

The models are divided up into three main bases. There are individual components, such as buildings, roofs, slabs, columns, and sidewalks, that can be manipulated using various combinations of bases and components to represent each of the eleven building types represented by EC diagrams. Matt’s creativity and attention to detail resulted in an excellent teaching tool. He said, "I really enjoyed the challenge of bringing the flood elevation certificates to ‘life’ in LEGO form. It is very satisfying to show my professional peers how this toy can be used as a tool to educate adults on important topics such as flood hazard mitigation."

This completed model was unveiled at the 2024 NYSFSMA Annual Conference in Glens Falls, NY to universal acclaim and utilized by Janet Thigpen, Flood Mitigation Specialist with the Southern Tier Central Regional Planning and Development Board and NYSFSMA member, in her popular EC workshop. She said, “The Lego buildings added color and fun to a confusing part of the training.” The Lego models also traveled to the 2024 ASFPM Annual Conference in Salt Lake City, UT, where they wowed attendees.

NYSFSMA is currently working on detailed instructions on how to put together each model along with a curriculum so anyone who has basic floodplain manager experience and knowledge can use it for teaching.

Special thanks go out to Bill Nechamen, Janet Thigpen, and Brent Gotsch for helping to design the 3D representation of the EC diagrams, Ricardo Lopez-Torrijos and Shaun Gannon (past and current NYSFSMA Chairs) for shepherding the grant application from start to finish, the ASFPM Foundation for funding the project, the entire NYSFSMA Board of Directors for their support of this project, and Matt Savatgy for this tireless dedication to seeing this through to its completion.