Disaster Preparedness - Community preparedness for disaster management involves assessments of vulnerability, risk, and response to short-lived phenomena in the Earth's atmosphere, land and oceans. Particular episodic events are of concern such as severe weather (thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes), as well as tsunamis, river flooding, plain/coastal flooding, volcanic ash, earthquakes, harmful ocean blooms and human-made disasters such as petroleum releases in rivers and oceans. Communities need an increased understanding of the effects of short-term events on the physical, chemical, and biological processes that interact to affect human safety, the environment, and the economy. Improved decision support systems are being developed that may address human life and property damage, meet the requirements of planners, early warning systems, first responders, and contribute to impact assessments, risk communication, mitigation, and implementation of relief efforts. Disaster management applications will evolve in cooperation with federal agencies such as FEMA. The applications will draw upon, and impact other national applications including coastal management, community growth, homeland security, public health and water management.
(Added: 5-May-2003 Hits: 560)
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Disaster! Finder - If you're looking for the latest links in disaster information, the Disaster Finder finds them for you, and
even lets you preview your selections with brief site descriptions. All sites are clickable from the Disaster
Finder's category screens. The Disaster Finder also allows you to perform quick or detailed searches of its
links database.
Disaster Finder is a service developed and maintained by the NASA Solid Earth and Natural Hazards
Program (Code YO), NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., USA. This service was created for the disaster
community at-large so that the best links in disaster information could be found quickly and easily.
[keywords: disaster, links](Added: 22-Jun-1999 Hits: 1394)
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El Nino and TOPEX/POSEIDON Ocean Satellite Data - The latest image from NASA's Jason oceanography satellite, taken during a 10-day collection cycle ending December 2, 2002, shows the Pacific dominated by two significant areas of higher-than-normal sea level (warmer ocean temperatures). In the central equatorial Pacific, the large area of higher than normal sea surface heights (warmer than normal sea surface temperatures) associated with growing El Niño conditions has recently migrated eastward toward the coast of South America. Meanwhile, the influence of the 20- to 30-year larger than El Niño/La Niña pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation continues to create warm, higher-than-normal sea-surface heights in the north Pacific that are connected in a warm horseshoe pattern with the western and southern Pacific. Sea-surface heights are a measure of how much heat is stored in the ocean below. This heat influences both present weather and future planetary climate events.
[keywords: El Nino, TOPEX/POSEIDON, forecasting](Added: 22-Jun-1999 Hits: 1197)
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Global Fire Monitoring - The purpose of this site is to explain and illustrate current and future global fire
monitoring capabilities. The data links section is being expanded to increase
accessibility to current data. Information will be updated as new technologies,
data products, and approaches emerge, enhancing our understanding of and
capabilities in monitoring fires on a global scale.
[keywords: Fire emissions, satellite systems, images, EOS generation sensors, global data products](Added: 11-Aug-1999 Hits: 1334)
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Homeland Security - Federal, State, and local governments are cooperating to prevent and reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism, minimize possible damage, and recover from attacks that do occur. Agencies are strengthening aviation and border security, preparing the defense against bioterrorism, improving information sharing, and deploying more resources to protect our critical infrastructure. NASA’s measurements, observations, and modeling can provide data and information to Homeland Security networks to support risk assessments, vulnerability assessments, and mitigation assessments. Data and information can support decision making to ensure the adequacy of preparing for, preventing against, responding to and recovering from terrorist threats or attacks. Earth science-based solutions can serve this application by drawing on developments in several other applications, such as air quality, water management, public health, and disaster management. This application will focus especially on providing NASA data, information, and models to support governmental decision tools that identify, track, and forecast agents from anthropogenic disasters and terrorism introduced into the air and water. Prediction of events, hazardous situations, and impacts with increasing accuracy and longer lead times is a significant part of this application.
[keywords: terrorism](Added: 5-May-2003 Hits: 560)
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory: SCIGN Analysis - The Southern California Integrated GPS Network (SCIGN) is a collaborative project to install 250 permanent, continuously recording Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers in
and around the Los Angeles basin to provide accurate deformation information that will improve our estimates of earthquake hazards. Major participants in SCIGN include NASA/JPL,
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), and The University of California San Diego, operating under the umbrella of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). Chief
sponsors of the SCIGN network are the W. M. Keck Foundation, The National Science Foundation, NASA, and the USGS. Currently, SCIGN is in the process of identifying and
selecting candidate sites for installation based on the DOTS3 map.
[keywords: JPL, SCIGN, earthquake, GPS](Added: 22-Jun-1999 Hits: 1090)
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Natural Disaster Reference Database (NDRD) - The Natural Disaster Reference Database (NDRD) is a
bibliographic database on research, programs, and results
which relate to the use of satellite remote sensing for disaster
mitgation. The NDRD was compiled and abstracted from
articles published since 1981. Major sources for the contents of
this database were the NASA RECON and ISI Current
Contents databases. This database focuses on the nexus of
hazards and satellite remote sensing as well as models and
process studies through which these can be brought together.
Items of current and topical interest are also provided.
[keywords: disaster, references, abstracts, research](Added: 22-Jun-1999 Hits: 1207)
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Southern California Integrated Global Positioning System Network (SCIGN) - A significant element of NASA's Natural Hazards Research and Applications Program focuses on seismic hazards in Southern
California. NASA is the largest partner in a joint Federal-state-private foundation effort to establish a dense array of ground-based
GPS receivers in the Los Angeles basin designed to measure movements in the Earth's crust very precisely. The cost effectiveness of
this new GPS technology is being demonstrated in Southern California where NASA, NSF, USGS, and the Keck Foundation are
supporting the development of the Southern California Integrated GPS Network (SCIGN). SCIGN is a network of 250 GPS
receivers which will continuously monitor motion along faults and other land surface deformation to provide better estimates of
earthquake hazards and to more effectively support emergency response during earthquake recovery efforts.
[keywords: GPS, SCIGN, earthquake](Added: 22-Jun-1999 Hits: 1072)
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