Heard of NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM), but not quite sure what they’re all about? Have a look at their new site The OCRM in Your State, and use some fancy GIS’esq tools to navigate around the country and your state. The OCRM in Your State
Tag Archives | publications
EPA Launches Climate Ready Water Utilities
Posted on March 10, 2011
EPA has released another set of tools to help communities adapt to climate change: this time they’re focusing on water and wastewater utilities. If you only have a moment, start with the Climate Ready Water Utilities Toolbox. I know—another toolkit. But the EPA has taken an interesting strategy to address the primary challenge of toolkits: […]
FEMA Releases Wind Retrofiting Guide
Posted on March 7, 2011
FEMA has released a new publication on how to best retrofit existing residential buildings. While it was designed with the Gulf of Mexico in mind, it should be applicable for coastal areas around the country (or at least those subject to major wind). You can download the (large) PDF directly from FEMA’s website.
Comprehensive (and Free!) Emergency Management Outreach Toolkit
Posted on December 10, 2010
. . . and when I say “comprehensive,” I mean “comprehensive.” Ready.gov has come out with an emergency preparedness outreach plan they’re calling Resolve to be Ready in 2011, and it includes everything from press releases, newsletters, and links to videos to (are you ready for this?) tweets that you can cut and paste to […]
Best Practices for Effective Hurricane Communication
Posted on December 6, 2010
Louisiana State University has released a great brochure on best practices for communicating about hurricane risks. It’s short, simple, and it makes sense. Here’s the meat of it, broken down by audience: GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS Be Proactive in Educating the Public: Gaining compliance during a hurricane requires year-round efforts. Waiting until the storms hit invites disaster. […]
New NOAA PDF Answers Hurricane vs Oil Slick Questions
Posted on June 8, 2010
NOAA has released a short new PDF outlining how they expect the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill will affect this year’s hurricanes. The short version: not much. The two pages of “Hurricanes and the Oil Spill” attempt to concisely answer such questions as: What will happen to a hurricane that runs through this oil slick? (Very […]
New Survey of Southeast Louisiana Residents Shows Most Planning to Evacuate
Posted on June 7, 2010
A new survey of residents of Southeast Louisiana finds that while 57% feel at least “moderately comfortable” with the area’s levee systems, drainage pumps, and emergency warning systems, about 80% have “well developed” hurricane evacuation plans and say they are willing to evacuate in the face of a hurricane (see the graph for percentages of […]
Risk Communication: Best Practices
Posted on February 24, 2010
The folks over at the NOAA Coastal Services Center recently released a two-page summary of risk communication specifically for those working in coastal hazards. In addition to explaining the concept of risk and why our behavior in the face of risk is so complicated, it provides six best practices for those trying to communicate risk. […]
EPA Releases Water Quality Scorecard
Posted on February 17, 2010
Dealing with storms means dealing with stormwater. EPA has just released a new resource for local governments to help them do just that. In their words: “EPA has released a first-of-its-kind water quality scorecard designed to help communities in rural, suburban and urban settings incorporate green infrastructure practices to protect local water quality and improve […]
Improved Hazard Mitigation Assistance Guidance Released
Posted on September 29, 2009
FEMA has released a re-formatted version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) Guidance with internal links throughout the document. It is now possible to jump between sections in the document based on the internal links. The substance of the guidance remains the same, only the format has been changed. Kudos to […]