Water damage like flood damage is a very broad term & includes any situation where water or moisture causes damage to tangible goods or property. Both water damage & flood damage can originate from acts of nature or system failures within dwellings and other properties, such as vehicles. For example, leaving your window open during heavy rains can cause water damage to your window seal. In the same way, a hole in your roof may cause water damage, but not necessarily cause enough water damage to be classified as a flood.
Within the damage restoration industry, water damage is defined as any water that causes the unusefulness, or future use or value of any property to become impaired by water. Water damage restoration is defined as the act or process of restoring & is not complete until property brought back to a pre-loss condition. Therefore, a flood is simply a larger water damage, but for insurance purposes, floods are water intrusions originating on the outside of a structure and intrude indoors.