General Weather Resources

Natural Hazards.org
This site provides easy access to information about all types of natural hazards, including hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, El Niño/La Niña, and snow and ice. Information about the locations and seasons of greatest risk is provided. Links to carefully selected web sites and educational products for purchase are also included.

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Emergency Management

StormReady
There are relatively few uniformly-recognized standards dealing with the specifics of hazardous weather response operations. Recognizing this need, the National Weather Service has designed a program to help cities, counties, and towns implement procedures to reduce the potential for disastrous, weather-related, consequences. By participating in "StormReady," local agencies can earn recognition for their jurisdictions by meeting criteria established by the NWS in partnership with federal, state, and local emergency management professionals.

Florida Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH)
FLASH is a non-profit, public/private coalition dedicated to promoting and encouraging family and home safety. FLASH strives to bring together the best minds, the latest research, and the most practical techniques to help make homes safer from natural disasters. Its goal is to help Floridians minimize deaths, injuries, suffering, property damage, and economic losses caused by hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, or wildfires. It encourages them to build, buy, and use buildings that are safe from disaster, to know the risks that natural hazards present, and to understand ways of reducing these risks.

Regional Disaster Information Center, Latin America and the Caribbean
The mission of the Regional Disaster Information Center is "to promote the development of a prevention culture in the Latin American and Caribbean countries, through the compilation and dissemination of disaster-related information, and the promotion of co-operative efforts to improve risk management in the Region." To accomplish this mission, the Center has launched this web site in English and Spanish, providing on-line access to over 12,000 bibliographic references, publication and distribution of materials on disaster-related topics, and technical advice and training for the establishment of disaster information units.

Organization of American States publications
The Organization of American States offers the following three on-line publications:

• Disaster, Planning and Development: Managing Natural Hazards to Reduce Loss
  This publication presents general principles for integrating hazard management into development planning and project formulation, as well as a set of guidelines for applying the methodologies of hazard management.
• Primer on Natural Hazard Management in Integrated Regional Development Planning
  This publication covers most of the major natural hazards and many of the current tools (including GIS and remote sensing) available to assess and deal with these risks.
• Reduction of Vulnerability to Floods in River Basins
  Specialists in the environment, planning, and flood mitigation attended presentations of case studies, discussed experiences with and strategies for reducing the impact of floods on the selected economic sectors, and recommended activities appropriate for hemispheric cooperation. The conclusions and recommendations of this seminar are presented in this publication.

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Floods

Venezuela Flash-flood and Landslide Disaster
This U.S. Geological Survey slide show concerning the Venezuelan flash flood and landslide disaster of December 1999 consists of a series of 42 photographs, maps, satellite images, and a table of rainfall data. Photographs show landslides, flash-flood deposits, damaged roads, houses, apartment buildings, and other structures.

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Injury and Damage Statistics

Selected Sources of Data on Disasters and Disaster Costs
What constitutes a "disaster"? What constitutes a "cost"? Do we want to look at insured losses or all losses? How can we be sure that loss estimates are accurate for individual disasters and/or that they are comparable across disasters? How can we possibly compare the relatively high property losses in developed countries with the relatively high social costs (such as deaths, injuries, and homelessness) in developing nations? Which indirect costs should be included? To respond to these questions, the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado recently added this page to its Web site. The page does not provide statistics but rather links readers to sources of such information.

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Insurance

The Insurance Information Institute
The Insurance Information Institute (III) Web site provides information about insurance issues related to disasters and hazards mitigation measures, as well as statistics on disaster losses including hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes.

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El Niño / La Niña

Comprehensive Bibliography on the El Nino Phenomenon
This bibliography is searchable by author's name and can also be browsed page by page.

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