Welcome to the Integrated Hazard Information Services web version.
This is canned (not live!) data. Any changes you make appear only in the prototype, not in an operational system, so play around and enjoy!
The site is fully tested on Firefox, but also works almost perfectly on Chrome.
Quick Guide:
Background:
The Hazard Services team has held two workshops which included forecasters and partners such as Emergency Managers. Both groups said they wanted more two-way communication before, during, and after hazardous events to improve decision making on both sides. EM's wanted to be able to see the hazard information coming from the NWS in customized ways as well as communicate potential impact information to the forecasters.
Two-way communication can and should take place in a number of ways -- phone, chat, twitter, etc. In addition, workshop participants designed a basic internet layout showing spatial and temporal hazard information overlaid with GIS data and agreed that it would be most effective if both the forecasters and partners were looking at the same picture. The prototype you see is an attempt to realize such an interface.
We are looking for your innovative ideas on how this might be most effectively used to help you do your job. Clearly, during a short-fused tornado warning, an EM will not have much time to communicate back to the forecaster in real time. However, suppose that on a regular basis, the EM community could input potential impacts during down time. The forecaster would then have this information as a "backdrop" when issuing short-fused warnings, and tailored alerts could be sent to your office. This is just one idea -- we invite you to think about your emergency situations and how we might use such new technologies.
The Integrated Hazard Information Services Prototype allows Emergency Managers (EMs) to view hazard information and update impact information, thus allowing EMs to enhance communication with the WFO forecasters.
Layout
Bottom: This is the Temporal Display. The current time is marked by the green arrow and the selected time by the red one. You can click on the red arrow's slider or anywhere on the display to change the selected time. Below this, the hazards are visible with their time ranges displayed with colored bars. You can click a hazard name to select and pan to it, and the check mark next to the name toggles its visibility. You can pan the whole temporal display forward or backwards using the buttons on the right, as well as change the duration of the display using the buttons on the left. Note how if you change the selected time, the hazards visible on the screen change to match.
Left: This is the Control Panel. You can use the check boxes next to layer names to toggle visibility, and select the radio next to a layer you want to be active.
Top: This is the Menu Bar. It contains various options, some of which will be discussed later. If a polygon is selected, you can click on Queries > Census Data to get a pop-up with the census data contained inside that polygon. You can click Time Set and Time Range to change how the temporal display determines which hazards to show (a set of individual times or a range of times). Reset events removes all of the events on the screen and reverts the database to the original set.
You can change the View you are using by clicking Views and selecting one. This will change the default visible layers, hazard duration, hazard category, etc.
Drawing Toolbar: This is how you interact with polygons and other shapes on the map. If hazard mode is ticked, any polygon/point/line will be marked as a hazard and the Hazard Information Dialog will pop up. To make a polygon/line, click to place a point and double click to end. Any shape can be modified using Drag, Rotate and Edit (to edit individual points in a polygon/line). Shapes can be selected using Box (to get multiple) or with Select.
Functionality
To create a hazard polygon:
Set the drawing toolbar to Polygon and draw one on the map (click to place a point, double click to close). Now the Hazard Information Dialog will pop up, which can be used to edit the information for the hazard by selecting a hazard category and hazard type. With any polygon, you can select it (using Select from the drawing toolbar and clicking the polygon) and query the Census Data by clicking Tools > Census Data.
To Create a Hazard Polygon By Area: Click "By Area" on the top right of the toolbar and a new map will come up. You can either view counties or zones, select one by clicking on it, and select OK. This will create a hazard polygon that you can then assign a type etc.
Hydrographs and River Points: Change to the Canned Flood view using the Views drop down in the top left. If you "activate" the river forecast points layer by selecting the round radio button next to it in the control panel, you can click a forecast point on the map to view the hydrograph.
To create a Tracked TO.W warning:
Change the view to "Canned TOR" using the drop down menu in the upper left. Now click "Storm Tracking" in the upper right, and drag the "Drag Me To Storm" dot to a location. Now the tracked hazard will appear, and you can assign it to be a TO.W using the HID. Now you can use the "Drag" mode on the drawing toolbar to modify the track and the hazard area will change. Checking "Curved" will allow the track to curve.