Essential Tools
In this section, you will learn about some of the main tools emergency managers use in their decision making, planning, and preparedness efforts for potential impacts from tropical storms in their communities:
- Hurricane Evacuation Studies (HES) serve as the foundation for effective hurricane planning (including potential evacuations) for your community. These studies include surveys and analyses that provide the basis for decision-support tools including surge mapping and calculations of evacuation clearance times. This information is also used to anticipate scenarios for planning and preparedness and in HURREVAC (described below) to aid with decision-making during tropical cyclone threats.
- The Technical Data Report provides tools and products of specific HES findings as they apply to a community. This includes surge maps, evacuation zones, and evacuation clearance times.
- HURREVAC is a decision support program, based on the HES, that assists with the evacuation decision-making process. This tool provides county-specific guidance by graphically displaying NHC forecast information along with HES data to better understand evacuation timing scenarios, decision point triggers, and local impacts of weather hazards that may need to be considered when preparing your community.
- Post-storm Assessments serve as vital "after action reports" to evaluate how effectively the products of the HES were used, assess the accuracy of the study data, and collect valuable post-storm data about the behavior of residents, post-storm weather data, and efficiency of the evacuation. This is compiled into recommendations that are used to improve future planning and preparedness.