You may be wondering how to work your way through this site. To help, I’ve put together some thoughts based on what may be loosely described as “use cases.”
Obviously, there are some things here that you will want to consult with professionals.
Looking to Build or Buy a Home
This site can provide information that will help you make more informed decisions when dealing with several groups involved in building (engineers, architects, insurers, etc.) or buying (insurers, banks, real estate agents). This list should not be considered absolutely complete and you still involve local experts or certified practitioners as needed:
- Locate your property.
- Research events that have occurred in the area. You can do this through the Resources page. You should definitely check for issues associated with severe storms, surge, flooding, and wildfires. There may be other events.
- Locate your local and regional Emergency Management Offices. You can find these on the Resources page.
- Under the Overview / Advisement tab, read through Steps 1 (Be Aware), 2 (Mitigate), 3 (Prepare), and 5 (Recovery)
- Look for programs that will help you protect your property–such as Firesmart or similar programs. Those can also be found on the Resources page.
- Look under Resources for guidance from hardware stores or other associations.
- Look under “Getting Going” and the Home. This section is in development.
- Communicate with the professionals involved in the designing and/or insuring of the property to discuss any issues you may have.
Looking to Better Protect Family / Property
This site can provide some guidance and resources to help you take steps to protect your family. A key part of this is making sure that you are staying connected with your local Emergency Management Office and ideally are connected to local alerting services. Some steps you can take (again, your situation may vary):
- Locate your property. You may want to look at this through the Toporama site on the Resources page.
- Research events that have happened in the area. You will find sources of information on the Resources page and you should definitely check for information on severe storms, flooding, storm surge, and wildfires.
- Locate your local and regional Emergency Management Offices. Links can be found on the Resources page.
- Read through the Overview/Advisement page to get a sense of how this all comes together. You will need to read through each of the five steps as well.
- You may benefit from other information found on the Resources page, such as the general lists. For example, if you are on the East Coast of Nova Scotia, there are some lists that have been put together like checklists (they need to be adjusted to fit your specific needs but are at least a starting point).
- Visit the Current conditions page and feel free to bookmark any links that may be relevant to your situation. These will be useful later when you are watching for things.
- If looking for other ideas, consider visiting Getting Going under The Home. This is based on personal experience so some things may play out a bit differently but at least you won’t run into the same challenges.
Setting up an Emergency Management Capacity in a Smaller Community
This can be quite the undertaking and a guide is currently being produced. That being said, setting up this kind capacity is really a community AND team exercise. This site can help provide some resources to help out:
- Locate your community on the maps. Topographical maps and others can be found on the Resources page.
- Reach out to your regional or Provincial (or equivalent) Emergency Management Office. Bookmark their site (links are on the Resources page).
- Visit the Resources page and look under Training for any familiarization you may need and Standards that have been developed over time.
- Read through the Overview/Advisement page and the five steps if you’re not already familiar with them. If you’ve got some experience in the area, are a Certified Emergency Manager, or have worked with groups in the past, you are likely to have run into most of this in the past somewhere.
- Visit the Getting Going page and look under Communities. This is still being worked on but does have some advice that may be useful.
- Feel free to copy or otherwise capture any information from the Resources page. If any of the lists or things like that appear useful and you need an editable copy to modify for your specific community, reach out through the Contact Us form.
- Feel free to capture any of the sources on the Current Conditions page.
- Feel free to reach out through the Contact Form.
Future Plans for the Site
The focus of work for the site consists of the following:
- improving the list of resources available.
- improving and expanding the automation used to help detect and notify of any potential events.