Census Bureau Launches New Tool for Hurricane Planning and Assessment

WASHINGTON, July 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Census Bureau, in cooperation with the National Weather Service, announces the launch of OnTheMap for Emergency Management: Hurricanes, a Web-based tool that provides real-time workforce information when a hurricane strikes land in the United States.

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OnTheMap for Emergency Management: Hurricanes is an easy-to-use tool that provides a live feed from the National Hurricane Center. When a storm's leading winds make landfall, the application will allow users to view the characteristics of the local workforce, such as the affected industries, the ages of workers and workers' earnings with a simple click of the link.

"OnTheMap technology has been providing useful data for emergency preparedness for some time, but this new tool doesn't require any specialized training," said Jeremy Wu, chief of the  U.S. Census Bureau's Local Employment Dynamics Partnership. "It puts valuable information directly into the hands of emergency planners and local officials."

OnTheMap for Emergency Management: Hurricanes provides users with:

• Access to the most recent workforce data for the area impacted by a hurricane.
• An easy-to-use, Web-based interface for visualizing hurricanes and jobs data, including historical results and downloadable reports.
• The most recent storm location information as provided by a direct link to the National Hurricane Center.

OnTheMap for Emergency Management: Hurricanes, is a product of OnTheMap, an online mapping and reporting application that shows the relationship between where people work and where they live, as well as the characteristics of the workforce. It allows users to create, print and download workforce related maps, profiles and underlying data down to the block level.

OnTheMap comes from the Census Bureau's Local Employment Dynamics Partnership.

Editor's note: The data can be accessed at: http://lehdmap4.did.census.gov/themap4/em/index.html.

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau