Editor’s note: The goal of The EBM Toolbox is to promote awareness of tools for facilitating EBM processes. It is brought to you by the EBM Tools Network, a voluntary alliance of tool users, developers, and training providers.
By Sarah Carr
Tools for modeling coastal hazard impacts and assessing the vulnerability of communities and ecosystems to these impacts include…
For modeling coastal hazard impacts
- ASA’s Inundation Toolbox (www.asascience.com/software/housetools/inundation-toolbox.shtml) predicts coastal inundation by applying storm surge model predictions to local topography datasets to generate maps of areas at risk of inundation from predicted surge.
- SLOSH (www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/surge/slosh.shtml; US only) estimates storm surge heights and winds resulting from actual and possible hurricanes.
For assessing and mitigating vulnerability to coastal hazard impacts
- Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Tool (www.csc.noaa.gov/rvat) provides a process for conducting hazard identification, social and environmental vulnerability, and mitigation opportunity analyses as well as a storm surge visualization tool.
- HAZUS-MH (http://haz.main.org/taxonomy/term/19/all; US only) estimates physical damage, economic losses, and social impacts from floods, hurricane winds, and earthquakes.
- Hazard Assessment Tools (www.csc.noaa.gov/hat) help users quickly identify potential hazards for a location. The tool functionality is available in template form and can be set up for any location with the required data and resources.
Most of these tools are also useful for assessing vulnerability to potential climate change impacts. Stay tuned for the next edition of The EBM Toolbox, which will cover additional climate change tools.
(Sarah Carr is coordinator for the EBM Tools Network. Learn more about EBM tools and sign up for Network updates at www.ebmtools.org.)