Hurricane Isaac reinforced the need for more data in preparing for storms that enter the Gulf of Mexico and led to another set of new data for GOM3. Normally, changes are made to the toolbars only during full monthly updates, but with the rapid generation of storms in the Atlantic, these changes are being released immediately. First, seven new web services are available from the What's New button in ArcMap (the red exclamation point). In the portion compiled by ESRI, two are improved displays of forecast storm tracks and current wind speeds while the other two show past tracks of this year's storms and counties where weather advisories are in effect. The counties covered by warnings may be clicked with the Identify tool to display a link to the online advisory.
The other three layers are forecasts from the National Weather Service. These layers display forecasts for significant wave heights, wind speeds and wind gust speeds over the upcoming days. Each includes links to learn about the forecasts and they are recommended to understand the timing of these forecasts. The links are also available here: Wave Heights, Wind Speeds and
Wind Gusts.
Four other layers are included with the intermediate update today. Airports/airfields are now available from the toolbar under Map Layers->Geopolitical. Under Map Layers->Environmental/Safety, hospital locations and FEMA evacuation routes are included. Attribute data is minimal for these layers, but hopefully they will provide location information for personnel during emergencies and evacuations.
The seventh GOM3 User Conference will be held on October 17, 2012 in The Woodlands, TX. This year's conference will present all of the latest technology. We are accepting paper submissions to present at the conference. The topics from past conferences cover all aspects of the industry, so your workflows in GIS will likely fit well into this conference. To present a paper, please contact us at 562-428-3181 or contactesa@earthsci.com.
To attend the conference, please click here to register.
For a list of past newsletters, click here.