Policy Challenges in Supporting Community Resilience

From the FEMA reference library ... "Policy Challenges in Supporting Community Resilience" explores how governments can better engage with the public to increase locally-organized disaster resilience and empower citizens and local institutions to take an active role in protecting themselves and their communities. MORE INFO

CA Earthquake Fault Zones

The California Geological Survey has announced that it has posted its fault zone maps online for the first time. The 547 maps were previously available only in paper or CD formats.

The index map identifies all Official Maps of Earthquake Fault Zones delineated by the California Geological Survey through December 2010 under the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning Act. Individual Earthquake Fault Zone Maps can be viewed on screen. Digital image files (pdf) and Geographic Information System files (GIS) of individual maps can be downloaded by selecting a specific quadrangle map. MORE INFO

Record demand for information brought down Weather Service website

The National Weather Service experienced nearly six times its normal volume of Web traffic as a major winter storm moved across the country the last days of January 2011, leading to a slowdown and partial shutdown of its website and NWSChat, the tool the agency uses to communicate with emergency managers across the country. Read article on nextgov ...

OPINION ... Agencies like NWS really need to distinguish between public information and data needed by the emergency management community (NWSChat) and have independent capabilities to support the two missions.