FEMA’s Hurricane Incident Journal Combines Apps that Inform Response
FEMA has combined a number of applications that are part of the FEMA GeoPlatform to create the Hurricane Incident Journal. This story map provides relevant and up-to-date data and tools that provide spatial decision-making support to FEMA leadership. The journal is available to the general public to provide a greater understanding of storm events and a view into the federal information that comes together to inform disaster response.
Included in the Hurricane Incident Journal are:
- Hurricane Dashboard for Surge Inundation – presents a dashboard view that details the population exposed to surge inundation
- Hurricane Force Winds Dashboard – analysis of population within the wind threshold
- Logistics Needs for Surge Inundation – an estimation of the resources needed to support the populations exposed to storm surge
- Call Volume – an estimation of the number of callers and translator requirement based on surge inundation
- Hazard Exposure – a model of community impacts weighted by forecasted flood depth, wind speed, and social vulnerability
- Flood Extents – a hydrodynamic model that simulates flooding based on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory RIFT model
- Infrastructure – an interactive map to view the impacts on essential facilities (hospitals, schools, senior centers, etc.) based on wind speeds
- Transportation –traffic reports from Waze updated every two minutes with Hurricane Evacuation Routes and fuel availability
- Federal Support Disaster Declaration – a dashboard that shows the counties that have requested federal disaster response
In addition to the individual applications, the Hurricane Incident Journal contains dialogue about each map and links to further resources. The modeled damage assessments are based on flood depth grids and verified using satellite imagery. Wind data comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Satellite imagery and other remote sensing inputs are from NASA and the European Union’s Copernicus program. Weather data comes from the National Weather Service. Flooding models are informed by stream gauge sensor data feeds from the US Geological Survey. Additionally, these applications draw on data from joint field offices, disaster recovery centers, shelters, and other sources.
Esri’s geospatial cloud platform, ArcGIS , provides the means to deliver these lightweight applications. These dashboards and interactive maps incorporate an array of inputs to provide a quickly understandable common operational picture—condensing the time between data and decisions.
For more information on active hurricane response, please visit the Esri Disaster Response Program at www.esri.com/disaster.