LAUREL, MD – April 25, 2006 – Greenhorne & O'Mara (G&O) national engineering consulting firm, was awarded a new contract by North Carolina's Division of Emergency Management to continue to support a statewide elevation data and floodplain mapping program that provides flood hazard data to help North Carolina communities reduce long-term flood losses and damage. G&O is providing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) terrain data collection, photogrammetric services, water resources engineering, digital mapping, IT infrastructure and database services for this 5-year, multi-million dollar contract.

After Hurricane Floyd (1999), the State of North Carolina recognized the need for communities and property owners to have more up-to-date information about flood risk and hurricane vulnerability than the state provided. The Cooperating Technical State program provides a partnership between the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the State of North Carolina, and optimizes state and federal funding to benefit floodplain mapping, ensuring the compliance with national standards for Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). Since 2001, G&O has been working with the State of North Carolina on the Floodplain Mapping Program (NCFMP). During that time, G&O has conducted flood studies for over 2,000 miles of streams and produced nearly 1,000 DFIRM flood map panels for the Program.

Frank Finch, P.E., G&O Senior Vice President, Water & Environment said, "We are honored to be a part of this on-going effort since its inception. G&O has applied talent, leadership, new staff, and additional resources in support of this project. We were selected for this program because of our continued commitment to a high quality product and quality service and are playing a role in setting the standard for this kind of specialized work nationwide."

Greenhorne & O'Mara is a national, full-service engineering consulting firm that has provided solutions in the areas of general civil, transportation, environmental, water resources, and hazard mitigation and security, for more than 56 years. With 15 offices located in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, G&O provides a broad range of services to private industry as well as federal, state, and local government clients.