Featured Software: HURREVAC

For the first time since the start of record keeping in 1851, this year four named tropical storms have come and gone in the Atlantic before the end of June.  And although Chris was the only storm that attained sufficient wind speed to qualify as a hurricane, rest assured an early start to the season means somewhere between remaining 2012 storm names Ernesto and William, at least one Category 3 or above hurricane will pay a visit to the U.S. gulf/east coast or outlying island regions.  So, for your consideration, find below information and links to one of the first commonly available geospatial tools for emergency preparedness/planning and response - HURREVAC:

Program Description: 

HURREVAC stands for "HURRicane EVACuation" and is a restricted-use computer program historically funded by FEMA and/or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for government emergency managers to track hurricanes and to assist evacuation decision-making for their communities. This real-time data analysis tool allows state and local emergency management officials to make prudent and informed decisions based on information developed during the Hurricane Evacuation Studies (HES) process and real-time forecast data distributed by the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center (NHC).  Source: USACE

Cost: Free to federal, state and local government workers with official need. For-fee, commercial support for private entities is available directly from the developer.

Informational Websites:

• HURREVAC (Main Site - USACE)
• HURREVAC (Support Site - Sea Island Software )
• Sea Island Software (For-fee, private sector commercial support)
• What's New for 2012 (15:40 video, good program overview)

Companion Efforts:

• Sea Lake and Overland Surge from Hurricanes (SLOSH - shown below)
• Hurricane Evacuation Studies

Comment: Because NOAA, USACE, FEMA, and HURREVAC software vendor Sea Island Software all have a dog in this fight, information about HURREVAC is not as well presented and easy to find as would probably be the case for one-party software. Consequently, although the pages offered above are good places to start learning more about the program, be advised you will need to do some digging around on these pages to gain full appreciation of available features and functions.