| Popis: |
Statistically, flooding is the most devastating natural disaster not only in the US, but in the world. Of the many different severe and normal weather events, floods typically cause the most casualties and damage. Within Hazard Services of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, software is being developed and improved for use by the National Weather Service to help prevent such disasters. Because flooding is a worldwide event, the new program produced by this Hazard Services project was created with the intention of being used anywhere for the safety of the public. Time is of the essence in a flooding event and forecasters need to have all relevant information readily available. This project’s work provides a script that gives forecasters the tools to issue quick and efficient warnings by creating a catalog of flood prone areas, customized for the regions that each forecast office covers. By ingesting unique geospatial data all at once with a merged file in the form of dams, rivers, and burn scars into a relational database, forecasters can simply choose the shape and initiate a watch, warning or advisory within the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) software. Having access to pre-set outlines of dam-break outflow, burn scars, and river inundation is much more efficient than drawing the shape of an area that is expected to flood by hand. Thus, not only does the new program allow faster issuance of alerts, but it has left less room for error and more room for geospatially accurate alerts. With this program, we were able to store and then retrieve shapefiles from a database within the AWIPS software swiftly, and much more efficiently than before. |
