Enhancing Natural Hazards Data with Photographs

Photographs and other visual media provide invaluable pre- and post-event data for natural hazards. Scientific research, mitigation, and forecasting rely on visual data for post-analysis, inundation mapping and historic records. Instrumental data reveal only a portion of the whole story; photographs explicitly illustrate the physical and societal impacts from the event. Visual data is rapidly increasing as the availability of portable cameras and video recorders becomes more attainable. Incorporating these data into archives ensures a more complete historical account of events. Integrating natural hazards data, such as tsunami, earthquake and volcanic eruption events, tide gauge records, socio-economic information, and tsunami deposits and runups along with illustrated photographs enhances event comprehension. Global historic databases at NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) consolidates these data, providing the user with easy access to a network of beneficial information. NGDC's Natural Hazards Image database interfaces via Keyhole Markup Language (KML) and the historic databases, and on its own as a web service. NGDC frequently updates a suite of natural hazards KML files (tsunami source events, tsunami runups, significant earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) for viewing in 3D Earth browsers, such as Google Earth. Each map point identifies event date, cause, fatalities, and provides links to historic database event details, including photographs. Upcoming prototypes for new features and improvements will also be highlighted.