Environmental Health Tools – ESRI/FEMA Hazard Maps

While we’re all (hopefully) thinking a bit more about natural hazards, preparedness, response, mitigation, etc., here’s a web site that might be handy. The GIS software firm ESRI has partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide a web-based tool for mapping and identifying natural hazards around your community – 100 year floodplains, locations of historical hurricanes, tornados, windstorms, and hailstorms. If you want to figure out how prepared your community is for disaster response, you’ll need to start with identifying the likely hazards.

This site focuses on natural hazards, and doesn’t include things such as forest or brushfire hazards (common out west) or potential impacts from chemical releases. As has been discussed before, the Bush Administration has suppressed right-to-know programs that go back to the Reagan Administration, which limit your ability to understand potential chemical hazards in your community, and hence limit your ability to assess your community’s ability to respond to them. However, with the investment of some work, there are tools available (here and here) to fill those data gaps.