Real-time maps during times of crisis, emergency, and destructive weather incidents are a crucial component in emergency response, disaster monitoring, and reporting. With tools like web GIS, vector maps, open data feeds and the likes at our disposal there’s many fine, useful web resources available to us to support situational awareness. One tool that got our attention this week is from Global Forest Watch.
Global Forest Watch webmap
This webmap was designed to provide data layers like active wildfire locations, protected areas, land use data and more, however, they also have an active wind data layer. With Hurricane Matthew now pummeling Cuba, the Bahamas and soon, the USA the wind layer using vector tiles have resulted in a powerful map that paints a very impressive, and perhaps scary, picture of what is taking place.
According to Reuters, The hurricane, which the United Nations said created the worst humanitarian crisis to hit struggling Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake, whipped Cuba and Haiti with 140 mile-per-hour (230 kph) winds on Tuesday, pummeling towns, farmland and resorts. Matthew was a Category Four hurricane through Tuesday but was downgraded to Category Three early on Wednesday, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. (Source: Reuters)
About the Global Forest Watch Service – GFW Fires combines real-time satellite data from NASA’s Active Fires system, high resolution satellite imagery, detailed maps of land cover and concessions for key commodities such as palm oil and wood pulp, weather conditions and air quality data to track fire activity and related impacts in the South East Asia region. GFW Fires also offers on-the-fly analysis to show where fires occur, and help understand who might be responsible
View the Global Forest Watch webmap with active wind data layer HERE
