Natural Hazards Risk & Vulnerabilities Assessment
The United States experiences hundreds of deaths and tens of billions of dollars in economic losses each year as a result of natural disasters. Although we have reduced the number of lives lost to these events, the economic costs associated with major disasters continues to escalate each decade. These costs include the destruction of homes and critical urban infrastructure, the dispatch and coordination of emergency response resources, the disruption of commerce and financial markets, and the distribution of disaster relief and recovery funds.
The RMGSC is committed to supporting the USGS mission to provide reliable scientific information to help minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters. For example, RMGSC scientists are currently providing a unique combination of risk and vulnerability assessment, sophisticated natural hazards monitoring systems, and post-event analysis. RMGSC is also a leader in demonstrating how integrating information about multiple interrelated hazards (such as fire, floods, and debris flows) can significantly improve the usefulness of USGS information in reducing loss of life and property.
In addition, the natural hazards risk and vulnerability assessment and emergency response research performed at RMGSC directly supports the development of scientific information for long-term planning to reduce the exposure and risk posed to urban environments. These activities allow communities, working with partners throughout all sectors of our society, public and private, to become more resilient to natural hazard events.
Natural Hazards Support System (NHSS)
NHSS with active Hurricane and supporting information
The Natural Hazards Support System (NHSS) helps monitor, respond to and analyze natural hazard events, including earthquakes, hurricanes, severe weather, floods, wildfires, and tsunamis. The RMGSC developed NHSS to provide a web-based portal to integrated current natural hazard information, geospatial data, and detailed information directly from expert sources.
This combination of information provides decision makers and the public with a tool to track and analyze numerous natural hazard events across the country and around the world. For example, as a hurricane nears the shoreline, NHSS users can pinpoint the current location of the hurricane, in addition to accessing near real-time information about associated stream levels, wind speeds, and tide conditions. NHSS information can also be used to analyze the potential impacts of different types of natural hazards events occurring in the same geographic area.
The NHSS currently contains near real-time natural hazards information for:
Earthquakes (USGS National Earthquake Information Center)
Volcano Alerts (USGS Volcano Hazards Program)
Weather Watches/Warnings (NOAA National Weather Service)
Tropical Storms/Hurricanes (NOAA National Hurricane Center)
National Wildfires (National Interagency Fire Center)
The NHSS also provides real-time natural hazards information for the following:
Southern California (SoCal) Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP)
Southern California is particularly susceptible to the potential for catastrophic losses caused by natural disasters. The region’s natural hazard vulnerabilities include earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, landslides, coastal erosion and floods. The disaster events triggered by these natural hazards result in devastating consequences including personal injury and death, building, infrastructure, and critical facility destruction, service and infrastructure outages, business interruption, job loss, and quality of life degradation. Estimates of expected economic losses from all these hazards in the eight county region (i.e., Imperial, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura) of Southern California exceed $3 billion per year.
As of the 2000 Census, nearly 19.7 million people resided in the eight county region of Southern California. Since then, the region’s population is estimated to have increased by approximately 276,000 annually. With this increase in population comes increased exposure to the risk of primary hazards as well as secondary hazards triggered by the primary hazard events. The exposure to such risks is only expected to increase in the coming decades. By 2030, much of the region’s projected population growth is anticipated to occur in areas of Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties.
Risk Analysis-Identifying Human Hazards Exposure Recent disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, have demonstrated that when the devastation from a natural disaster is great, that the ability of each individual to recover depends on the recovery of other individuals as well as the structure and institutions of the community. One definition of a natural disaster is the failure of the urban environment to respond to a shock to the system triggered by a natural hazard event and the inability of either the individuals or communities that compose that urban environment to recover (i.e., lack of emergency preparedness, mitigation planning and resiliency).
Geographic research objective is to help improve the resiliency to natural disasters in Southern California through the integrated application of physical and social science research regarding natural hazards to support community decision-making concerning emergency preparedness, emergency response, and recovery of the natural and human environments.
To improve the resiliency to natural hazards in Southern California, geographic research methodologies were developed to quantify the risk, exposure and sensitivity of the regional economy as a result of the simulated magnitude 7.8 ShakeOut earthquake scenario. In order to assess the socioeconomic consequences of the ShakeOut scenario, scientists integrated geologic thematic information along with socioeconomic data to evaluate the potential impacts to the region’s labor market (USGS OFR 2008-1211), small businesses (USGS OFR 2008-1222) and intraregional commuting patterns (USGS OFR 2008-1254). USGS geographic research publications documenting the ShakeOut Scenario socioeconomic analysis were disseminated in preparation for the 2008 State of California Golden Guardian Emergency Response Public Exercise using the ShakeOut earthquake scenario.
Publications
References
National Wildland Fire Applications & Support
Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination (GeoMAC)
GeoMAC is an internet-based mapping application designed to allow Fire Managers and the Public access to dynamically displayed online maps of current fire locations and fire perimeters in the continental U.S. and Alaska. The GeoMAC application is an indispensable tool for aiding fire-personnel by dynamically displaying the most current wildland fire information available from a web browser. The RMGSC developed and maintains the site.
National Fire Plan Web Mapping
The National Fire Plan was developed in August 2000, following a landmark wildland fire season, with the intent of actively responding to severe wildland fires and their impacts to communities while ensuring sufficient firefighting capacity for the future. The NFP addresses five key points: Firefighting, Rehabilitation, Hazardous Fuels Reduction, Community Assistance, and Accountability.
The National Fire Plan Maps website is an internet-based mapping application that visually portrays the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture land management agencies hazardous fuels program projects in relation to the wildland urban interface communities. These are communities that are within the vicinity of federal lands that are at high risk from wildland fire. The hazardous fuels program reduces the impacts of unwanted wildland fires on communities, natural resources, and cultural resources. Past disruptions of natural fire cycles, as well as other management practices, have resulted in wildfires of increasing intensity and severity. Treatment of hazardous fuel will help reduce the impacts of wildfires on communities and restore health to fire-adapted ecosystems.
National Fire Plan Operations & Reporting System (NFPORS)
The National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS) is an interagency system designed to assist field personnel in managing and reporting accomplishments for work conducted under the National Fire Plan. NFPORS is used by the five federal wildfire agencies to track Hazardous Fuels Reduction (HFR) and Burned Area Rehabilitation (BAR) treatment projects. NFPORS provides comprehensive National Fire Plan data starting with FY03. NFPORS is the system of record for planning and reporting accomplishments for these two NFP key points.
RMGSC personnel developed, implemented, and maintain the spatial portion of NFPORS. The current mapping tool supports NFPORS requirements in three ways: First, it provides a confident method for locating and verifying location for project and treatment units for Hazardous Fuels Reduction and Burned Area Rehabilitation projects; Second, it provides additional location-based information to the NFPORS database (e.g. Congressional District, County); and Third, it provides a mechanism for making and printing maps suited for project execution, guidance, reports, or display.
California Interagency Fire Plan
The Fire Planning and Mapping Tools Website is a user-friendly public website. Users can create maps of an area, print, and download data to their PC for use with GIS software. The application provides critical GIS data needs in a timely fashion to meet the needs of communities. This comes at a critical time when community fire protection planning is now required in order to receive grant funding through Federal programs such as the Healthy Forests Initiative, Healthy Forests Restoration Act, and the National Fire Plan.
The site allows fire personnel, in the field, to upload their fire perimeters. This capability keeps the Fire Planning site current and provides a central storage location for fire perimeter data.
South Sierra Geographic Information Cooperative (SSGIC) & Sierra Wildland Fire Reporting System (SWFRS)
These sites are being developed by the USGS, for the Southern Sierra Fire Management Officers from Bureau of Land Management, USDA Forest Service, and National Park Service. The SWFRS application is a prototype comprehensive reporting system for all federal fires in the southern and central Sierra Nevada range. The purpose of this reporting system tool is to enhance fire managers ability to collaborate and better understand fire and smoke impacts across multi-agency landscapes. This application provides reporting forms and tools for digitizing point and perimeter locations for small fires. Dispatchers are able to enter fire information as the information becomes available.
A primary function of this system is providing real-time air quality information to the California Air Quality Advisory Board during prescribed-burn operations. The current site has web links to cameras located throughout the area which are used to view the smoke conditions.
Links to Real-Time Smoke Monitoring sites using Beta Attenuation Mass monitors (BAMs) are provided. BAMs measure particulates in the air, specifically smoke. Each monitor can measure either or both 2.5 and 10 micron particulates depending on the filters used. The web site is updated hourly with 5-minute averages from the operating site.
Geospatial Task Group (GTG) Website
The RMGSC currently hosts the Geospatial Task Group website. The GTG is a coordinated point of contact dedicated to providing high-quality information and expertise on the use of geospatial data, standards, applications, and processes in support of interagency wildland fire management. Through sharing information the GTG is committed to improving fire safety and wildland fire management and supporting all wildland fire activities including planning, incident management, education, prescribed burns, and various other activities.
Rapid Data Delivery System (RDDS)
The RMGSC has developed the Rapid Data Delivery System (RDDS) to provide emergency and incident response teams with timely access to geospatial data including a variety of vector layers and a wide range of raster data including orthoimagery, digital raster graphics (USGS topographic maps), digital elevation models, and hillshade topographic products. Raster products are generated and managed with EarthWhereTM spatial content management and provisioning system, that provides users fast access to required formats with options to reproject, mosaic and reformat data based on their specific needs. Based on user requests in 2007, updated 1-meter natural color imagery has been added for data delivery including high risk areas of wildland fire and hurricanes.
RMGSC personnel developed the first version of the Rapid Data Delivery System (RDDS), called Fire Data Ordering (FDO), in the fall of 2005 to support the delivery of data to tactical wildland fire responders. The newest version of this application, which was renamed RDDS, expanded the functionality and content of the FDO to seamlessly support all types of tactical emergency responders. RDDS provides this support by offering a password-protected portal that allows users to quickly specify an area of interest (AOI) and then download the selected vector and/or raster data directly to their desktop. Data is delivered by the system as a clip, zip, and ship of selected vector data, or selected raster data will be made available at an FTP site or delivered via CD. The ease of use and access to data provided by RDDS is a key to tactical emergency responder's ability to quickly prepare and respond to national emergencies.
Grand County Fire Science
The probability of wildland fires has significantly increased across the nation in recent decades due to the combined effects of drought, insect and disease epidemics, expansion of populations into fire-prone areas, and increased fuel loads. In the Southern Rocky Mountain region, an unprecedented epidemic of Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) has been causing forest mortality on a massive scale since the early 2000s. The epicenter of the MPB outbreak in Colorado is Grand County, an area with a rapidly expanding wildland-urban interface and an economy based largely on recreation and tourism. The effects of large-scale fire in Grand County are likely to be severe, as its extensive, dense lodgepole pine forests - now largely dead or dying - are located on steep, mountainous terrain. Post-fire flooding and erosion would have significant impacts on the major reservoirs and lakes in Grand County, which provide water not only to local users but also, through trans-basin diversions, to many major population centers along Colorado's Front Range.
For these reasons, the USGS has selected Grand County as a demonstration site for an interdisciplinary multi-hazards assessment. The Rocky Mountain Geographic Science Center (RMGSC) provides overall coordination for the project, which encompasses investigations of the ecological, hydrological, geological, and social impacts of the MPB epidemic and associated potential fires. Scientists at the RMGSC are 1) monitoring and mapping the extent and status of the MPB epidemic using advanced remote sensing technology; 2) conducting fieldwork and modeling to quantify changing fuel loads and potential fire behavior in MPB-killed forests; and 3) developing an ecosystem services assessment framework to analyze the effects of the epidemic and potential fires on critical ecosystem processes and products such as water provisioning, sediment retention, wildlife habitat, and aesthetic values.
To develop the ecosystem services assessment for Grand County, RMGSC scientists are supporting the synthesis of research conducted by the other USGS disciplines on water quality and quantity, nutrient cycling, sedimentation, debris flows, erosion, population dynamics of native fish (including a threatened species of cutthroat trout), and numerous social and economic factors. The RMGSC will organize and integrate these results to establish a comprehensive accounting of the potential losses associated with fire. The project's findings will be shared with local agencies and stakeholders to facilitate management and mitigation of the impacts to people, property, and natural resources posed by natural and anthropogenic hazards in Grand County.
Collaborators for this project include the National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service (Arapahoe and Roosevelt National Forests, Rocky Mountain Research Station, and Fire Modeling Institute), Colorado State Forest Service, the Front Range Fuels Treatment Partnership, Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, Colorado Bark Beetle Collaborative, Joint Fire Sciences Program, and local governments.
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey