“To determine where the need is the greatest, planners require accurate information about the extent and location of the damage.

Airplanes and helicopters can capture detailed images. However, to be useful, these images must be pieced together and matched to scale, and even sunlight angle. In such cases, satellite images are preferable, because capture wide regions at one time.”

Particularly moving are the high-resolution slides (with explanatory notes) of the coast of Sendai before and after the tsunami.

They have gathered together books, reports and articles on topics as diverse as Human Behavior, Federal Aid, Media, Coast Guard, Victims, Property Losses, Resilience… the list goes on and on. Books and articles are citation links only (unless you happen to be an NETC LRC patron), but many of the reports are linked directly through the LRC catalog.

If you’re a University of Richmond Library patron, feel free to contact me about getting access to any of the books and articles you find through this page.

[Image courtesy of NOAA's Environmental Visualization Program.]

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:

I’ve blogged about this before - all the places where hurricane season forecasts can be found – but thought it bore updating, for this current season. Colorado State’s Tropical Meteorology Project produces the most up-to-date forecasts for the number of named storms per season. This year they’re predicting a doozy.

We foresee a very active hurricane season in 2010. We have increased our forecast from early April, due to a combination of a transition from El Niño to currently-observed neutral conditions and the continuation of unusually warm tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures. We anticipate a well above-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall. All factors are lining up for a very active 2010 hurricane season.
(as of 2 June 2010)

And this, from NASA’s Earth Observatory:

More Volcano/Earthquake imagery from NASA’s Earth Observatory is available 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

In case you don’t get enough storm stories from the Weather Channel’s “When Weather Changed History” series, the National Archives has produced a boxed set of DVDs, available at your local Sam’s Club or Costco:

Washington, DC…The National Archives announces the release of Natural Disasters, the first collection in a new series of boxed DVD sets entitled Our Planet Earth. Produced in partnership with Topics Entertainment, Our Planet Earth will focus on the preservation and conservation of our natural resources and the protection of our environment. The series will feature motion pictures created by the Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Selected by film archivists from the National Archives vast motion picture holdings, Natural Disasters chronicles some of the world’s most devastating earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, and volcanoes—random acts of nature that have altered the world’s economy, threatened and disrupted millions of earth’s inhabitants, cost thousands of human lives, and at times changed the course of history. Also recounted are the heroic efforts of relief workers to return cities to normal and the attempts of local governments to better prepare for future events.

Included among the gripping documentaries are:

• Loma Prieta Earthquake (1989), an examination of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake that destroyed the Oakland Bay Bridge and the Cypress Street Viaduct and disrupted the World Series.
• Day of the Killer Tornadoes (1978), the story of 147 deadly tornadoes that swept across Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, and other states in a 24-hour period.
• A Hurricane Called Betsy (1966), which recounts Hurricane Betsy’s 3,000-mile trip from the Caribbean through the Bahamas, Miami, the Florida Keys, and along the Gulf Coast to New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
• Eruption of Mt. St. Helens (1980–81), featuring reenactments, personal recollections, and narration of the historic eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
• The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936), a classic film about the Dust Bowl that includes a climactic dust storm sequence in which day suddenly becomes night and the landscape changes from moment to moment.

Seeing the tag line, “24 Intense Films” gave me pause – I don’t think it’ll be on the Christmas list for our 7-year old budding meteorologist, much as he would probably enjoy them….

The article covers both the improvements in technology and management of crises such as building collapse over time. This description of search and rescue operations in London during WW2 caught my attention, for instance:

Out of such chaos came timeless lessons in crisis management. Quickly discovering that a major collapse would turn out any number of local and regional units who sometimes began arguing over the next steps, British authorities invented the role of the “new incident officer,” typically an air-raid warden with good judgment who knew the neighborhood. After filing an initial report, he would set up a portable desk complete with blank forms. The desk flew a blue flag and also mounted a blue battery-powered lamp for night work. The incident officer wore a blue cloth cover on his hard hat. To all other emergency personnel arriving, the blue meant “check here before doing anything,” thus prioritizing critical tasks and preventing one team’s work from endangering another’s. One of the most important jobs—neglected by amateurs —was to fan out through the neighborhood to gather information on how many people might be trapped below. Without such information, rescue parties were sure to waste their efforts. Similar systemization can still be seen today at some emergency sites, where the incident commander works from a portable desk unfolded from the rear of his vehicle … often sporting a green or blue lamp.

The author, James R. Chiles, is also the author of Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology. The review from Publisher’s Weekly: “In a book that is much more than a litany of disaster and tips on survival, Chiles also offers fascinating, detailed analyses of “system fractures” chains of events yielding catastrophes.” If you are a U of R student or faculty member, take advantage of our distance education delivery service and have the book sent to you.

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?

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.