Latest Updates

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is pleased to announce that Earthquake-Resistant Design Concepts:...

Seattle, Washington, June 1, 2011 – On Friday, March 11, 2011 at 2:46 PM (local time), the northeast coast of Japan was struck by a magnitude 9.0 (M9.0) subduction earthquake as the boundary between the Pacific and the North American plates ruptured along an offshore section. The rupture extended about 200 miles along the Japan coast, resulting in approximately 100 feet of vertical slip and causing a series of devastating tsunamis. A similar event along the Cascadia...

Mark your calendars!  The Annual Hazus Conference will be held in Seattle, Washington, August 10 – 12, 2011, at the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building. 

HAZUS-MH is software developed by FEMA that analyzes risk from natural hazards in communities. To register for this FREE conference, please visit www.hazus.net. From their site:

HAZUS-MH is a powerful risk assessment methodology used to analyze potential losses from natural hazards including floods, hurricane winds and earthquakes. HAZUS uses state-of-the-art Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software combined with science, engineering and mathematical modeling to map and display hazard data and the results of damage and economic loss estimates for buildings and infrastructure. ...

The Pacific Northwest is exploring solutions that can provide officials an overview of a regional event.

The existing situation is very fragmented:

WA State is currently using ESI’s WebEOC (for which Vashon has an account) & ESiWebFUSION but this has an older architecture & cumbersome user interface and doesn’t readily allow integration with other technologies in use elsewhere.

The state has a wrapper or GIS based viewer for WebEOC, known as the Washington Information Sharing Environment (WISE) that also aggregates additional data (including from the military, as it was developed by the National Guard)

I’m not aware of what FEMA or DHS uses, but I suspect it is something else.

Neighboring states use WebEOC and other custom solutions. (Oregon is adopting – with some trouble- a more regional system: Virtual Emergency Network of Multnomah, for instance.)

King County has an independent...