Training | Assessment Tools

Thousands of people have logged on to NOAA’s historical hurricane tracking site to learn about 150 years of hurricane activity along the Atlantic Basin.

Some of the biggest challenges facing coastal communities involve coastal hazards. Such natural hazards include hurricanes, tsunamis, erosion, and harmful algal blooms. It is the job of local and state governments to reduce the negative environmental, social, and economic impact that these natural hazards can have on their communities.

NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS) is a part of this effort. NOS provides helpful hazard-related information and tools to state and local coastal programs. Much of this work is developed at the NOAA Coastal Services Center and involves training, information dissemination, and tools and methodologies created to assist in hazards assessment, response, and mitigation.

Training

Training is an important component of this effort. Topics include managing natural hazards in coastal areas and determining which portions of a community are most at risk. Courses are designed for state and local officials and can be taught at the Center or brought to the customer.

Assessment Tools

Knowing where a community is most vulnerable to coastal hazards is important information for planners and emergency preparedness officials. NOAA helps coastal communities document this information and prepare a hazard mitigation strategy.

The vulnerability assessment tool was developed to help local and state officials determine and prioritize specific vulnerabilities. Communities use this information to make future development plans and design effective evacuation and rebuilding plans when a disaster strikes. The Vulnerability Assessment Techniques and Applications Web site Web site provides researchers and practitioners with access to more than 40 hazard vulnerability assessment case studies that have been successfully applied in the Western Hemisphere.

The Historical Hurricanes Track Web site is an information resource that allows users to pinpoint historical hurricane information at specific geographic locations. With this site, users can learn about the size and frequency of events that have occurred in their area of interest, coastal population growth numbers over the past century, and hurricane-related damage estimates. Learning about past hurricane activity helps people prepare for the future.

Hurricanes are just one of many natural hazards affecting coastal communities. NOAA produces many products and services designed to help communities reduce the negative impacts of these weather events, evacuate safely, and rebuild effectively.

For the West Coast, the Protecting our Ports and Harbors Web site Web site focuses on earthquake and tsunami hazards. In addition to general information about hazards, this site includes hazard risk information, mitigation strategies, and an Internet mapping application that displays hazard data for Oregon ports.

A new tool under development will improve flood prediction capabilities. A Web site about the tool describes the flood forecasting process and illustrates flood inundation forecasts for meteorologists, local officials, and the public.

Harmful algal bloom (HAB) alert bulletins predict HAB landfall for the eastern Gulf of Mexico. NOS scientists can locate blooms by assessing surface chlorophyll concentrations detected by satellite imagery and verified by data from ships. They then apply their understanding of the biological and physical aspects of bloom dynamics and transport, and the conditions that are conducive for HAB development, to predict when and where HABs will impact coastal communities.

Additional data about hazards can be found in the Coastal Information Directory.