Archive for the ‘government information’ Category

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‘Tis the Season…

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

…for hurricane posts. The National Hurricane Study Program is a part of the “Comprehensive Hurricane Data Preparedness Study Web Site,” a joint effort of FEMA and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The National Hurricane Study Program has been in existence for over 20 years and develops information for States and Counties to assist them in managing their resources to minimize the adverse effects resulting from hurricanes.

It’s an annoyingly “1.0″ website, with the only interactivity or action coming from a list of linked acronyms (no-one does them better – or worse – than the government) and a rotating Corps of Engineers castle. But the information linked under those acronyms is – where available – rich and useful. (There’s a huge number of ‘empty’ links for individual counties and areas, and the main website admits “it is far from complete”.) Everything from Post-Storm Assessments,  behavioral data on hurricane evacuation studies, a limited number of hurricane evacuation studies (some very dated), and maps with “SLOSH” data (expectations for Sea, Lake and Overland Surge from Hurricanes) and evacuation routes and surge maps are available for certain locals.

Data from individual areas can also be found by using the “Other Links – State/County/City” link. This is where the website could really be useful. For Virginia, for example, the following information is available:

STATE: VA
—–Owner Type:——- State
Website: http://www.vdem.state.va.us/library/eopvol5/annexes/annexa/annexa2.pdf
Owner: Virginia
Descrition: Virginia Emergency Operations Plan, Hurricane Emergency Response
–HURREVAC AND DECISION ARCS
Website: http://www.hremc.org/surge.htm
Owner: HREMC
Descrition: Hampton Roads Emergency Management Committee – Assessing Vulnerability to
Hurricane Flooding
Website: www.vaemergency.com
Owner: Virginia
Descrition: Virginia Department of Emergency Management – The Virginia Department of
Emergency Management protects the lives and property of Virginia’s citizens from
emergencies and disasters by coordinating the state’s emergency preparedness,
mitigation, response and recovery efforts.
—–Owner Type:——- County
Website: http://www.yorkcounty.gov/fls/em/famprep.htm
Owner: York County, Virginia
Descrition: Family emergency preparedness
—–Owner Type:——- City
Website: http://hampton.gov/eoc/slosh.html
Owner: City of Hampton
Descrition: computerized model estimates the overland tidal surge heights and winds that
result from hypothetical hurricanes

Posted in Resources, Weather Emergencies, government information | No Comments »

SERT GATOR

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Florida’s State Emergency Response Team (SERT) has long been a leader in providing emergency and preparedness information to the public in innovate ways. They have a YouTube channel, extensive public readiness information on their main web page and a daily “Situation Report” page that gives information about the state’s Emergency Operations center readiness, as well as meteorological predictions (including space weather). But by far the most interesting and current use of their web tech-savvy is the Geospatial Assessment Tool for Operations and Response.

This interactive site, based on Google Earth images, gives users the ability to layer multiple types of information, including RECON Reports, weather forecasts, area contingency plans, tidal reports and more, and view them together. Satellite, street and nautical chart mapping are all options as well. The RECON reports include pictures where available. Here’s an example, from a “Priority” (Yellow) report from Escambia Perdido, near Pensecola. Fascinating and depressing, all at the same time.

Posted in Emergency Communications, government information | No Comments »

US Fire Administration on Google

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

USFA Pubs on Google Books

Here’s an amazing find, thanks to those good folks at the US Fire Administration Library. 290 titles are included so far, with topics ranging from technical reports on investigations of specific fires, to public education, to training manuals for firefighters and educational material for administrators. Technical overviews, such as “Fire in the United States: 1986-1995“, transcripts from Congressional hearings and special reports and analysis are also included, making this resource indispensable for researchers. Like anything from Google, it’s easy to search, either within individual titles or the entire collection; someone has also very helpfully organized the titles into a few specific subjects, such as arson, fire prevention, etc.

Posted in Emergency Communications, Research Links, Training, government information | No Comments »

2009 Hurricane Season Wrap Party

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

It’s been a quiet one, with H1N1 taking all the news space this season. National Geographic details why this hurricane season has been so Pacific-focused in a great article here.

With U of R alumni (and former “Leader-in-Residence” at the Jepson School) Leland Melvin serving as a mission specialist on this shuttle flight, I couldn’t help but mention NASA’s great online database of hurricane and typhoon images and information. With everything from current storm outlooks to educator resources to 3-D views of historic storms, it’s a fantastic resource.

(far left) Spider Leland Melvin

Posted in Research Links, Weather Emergencies, government information | No Comments »

GAO report on post-disaster collaboration

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

This item came to my attention a while ago (it was first published in July 2009), but I finally got a minute to actually look at it.

DISASTER RECOVERY
Experiences from Past Disasters Offer Insights for Effective Collaboration after Catastrophic Events

Highlights of GAO-09-811, a report to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate

In the wake of the 2005 Gulf Coast Hurricanes, coordination and collaboration challenges created obstacles during the government’s response and recovery efforts. Because of the many stakeholders involved in recovery, including all levels of government, it is critical to build collaborative relationships. Building on GAO’s September 2008 report which provided several key recovery practices from past  catastrophic disasters, this report presents examples of how federal, state, and local governments have effectively collaborated in the past. GAO reviewed five catastrophic disasters—the Loma Prieta  earthquake (California, 1989), Hurricane Andrew (Florida, 1992), the Northridge earthquake (California, 1994), the Kobe earthquake (Japan, 1995), and the Grand Forks/Red River flood (North Dakota and Minnesota, 1997)—to identify recovery lessons. GAO interviewed officials involved in the recovery from these disasters and experts on disaster recovery. GAO also reviewed relevant legislation, policies, and the disaster recovery literature.

What GAO Recommends
GAO recommends the Secretary of Homeland Security direct the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) to create a mechanism focused on sharing information and lessons learned regarding disaster recovery, including good collaborative practices. The Department of Homeland Security concurred with our recommendation.

The idea of looking for ‘lessons learned’ across a different types of disasters struck me as interesting. We tend to see research done on the after-effects of hurricanes, for example, but why shouldn’t there be lessons for emergency planners in all types of disaster recoveries?

Posted in Earthquakes, Emergency Communications, Research Links, Weather Emergencies, government information | No Comments »

Frontloading

Friday, August 14th, 2009

I’m away next week, so I won’t be blogging, but this week has been a banner one for interesting items.

The National Library of Medicine maintains a collection of more than 30 environmental health websites under the auspices of the Environmental Health and Toxicology SIS (Specialized Information Services). Topics covered range from the specific (Health effects from the collapse of the World Trade Center) to the general (Tornadoes).  The links contained within each page vary, but most begin with a set of ‘Overview’ links, all from US Government sites, and then may go on to include links to glossaries, data and research sites, and law and policy. Almost all include links to specialized research from the National Library of Medicine’s databases, such as Pubmed, Toxline, Hazardous Substances Data Bank, ChemID Plus, Household Products Database, Tox Town and Medline Plus.

Posted in Pandemic, Research Links, Resources, Weather Emergencies, government information | No Comments »

VA Hurricane Guide Published

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

This just in, courtesy of the VDEM:

hurricane-preparedness-banner1

New hurricane guides available
“The Hampton Roads Emergency Management Committee and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and VDEM have redesigned the Virginia Hurricane Guide. As part of the Ready Virginia public information campaign, the guide contains essential hurricane season information, such as evacuation routes, traffic reversal plans along Interstate 64, bridge/tunnel/ferry closure plans in the Hampton Roads area and family preparedness.

New sections of the guide explain staying in place versus evacuation, the importance of storm surge, and how public shelters are designed to help evacuees. The revised evacuation route section clarifies that I-64 is only one of many evacuation routes, and the guide gives detailed instruction about how to make a family emergency plan, get an emergency supply kit and stay informed during emergencies.

For the 2009 hurricane season, 250,000 copies of the guide were printed; most will be distributed by state and local agencies, private businesses and nonprofit organizations. Any organization interested in distributing the guides should contact the VDEM Public Affairs Office at (866) 782-3470. An interactive, Web-based version is also available at www.ReadyVirginia.gov. A federal homeland security grant paid for the printing costs.”

Posted in Emergency Communications, Resources, Training, Weather Emergencies, government information | No Comments »

Using summer to prepare for a possible H1N1 outbreak on campus

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

This article, from Inside Higher Ed, is a nice overview of how several colleges and universities are using the summer to better prepare for an outbreak of H1N1 on campus. Seeing this prompted me to investigate what our campus has done about H1N1, as Virginia is one of the handful of states with a recorded “widespread” outbreak.

This follows last month’s H1N1 Summit, hosted at the National Institutes of Health. I can’t seem to find an archived copy of the webcast, which was streamed live, but this blog post by J. Solomon (“In case of emergency, read blog…”) gives a great overview and links to video from several key speakers.

Posted in Pandemic, blogs, government information | No Comments »

Swine Flu Resources Round-up

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

It’s been interesting to watch publishers open up their H1N1 articles and resources to the general public. (Disclaimer: I know that part is only interesting to me as a librarian.  But the question remains: Is the future of publishing a ‘hybrid’ open-source model? Hmmm….)

Here’s a summary:

  • Scientific American mainly sums up blog entries from the “60 Second Science” blog. But there’s also a detailed interview transcript with Dr. Chris Olsen, Director of the Olsen Laboratory, a veterinary medicine lab in Wisconsin where Influenza ‘A’ viruses are studied, and a link to the April 2009 cover story called, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic” that describes the work of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.
  • The Lancet (a British medical journal) has also opened their pages:

“The Lancet’s H1N1 Resource Centre is the result of a collaborative effort by the editors of over 40 Elsevier-published journals and 11 learned societies who have agreed to make freely available on this site any relevant content. All papers have been selected by a Lancet editor, grouped by topic and fulltext pdfs made available to download free of charge.”

(If you haven’t seen an Elsevier price quote, you can’t appreciate the magnitude of this – Elsevier articles are notoriously expensive.)

Posted in Pandemic, Research Links, Resources, government information | No Comments »

Virginia Emergency Operations Plans link

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

From the VDEM newsletter:

Gov. Tim Kaine has approved the Commonwealth of Virginia Emergency Operations Plan Pandemic Influenza Incident Annex VI, now available at http://www.vaemergency.com/library/plans/index.cfm. The annex represents nearly two years of collaboration with many state agencies and provides guidance for non-medical response operations in Virginia to a pandemic influenza event.

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