What is a board? This is just a quick term to describe a presentation of a number of different viewpoints that helps those involved with planning, operations, and logistics understand what is going on around them.
All of the information on this site comes from sources that can be considered generally reliable and credible. To be considered reliable, the site must be right more often than not. It doesn’t mean that the site is perfect–nothing in this line of work is. To be credible, the information being presented must be something that we can reasonably expect that organization to be involved in producing and being capable of.
How to Set Up the Blocks
My approach to boards is to go from the general to the specific and, once you’ve arrived at the specific, start filling in information around whatever the problem is. The reason for this is simple. Say you’re dealing with a forest fire. You want to know if “your fire” is an isolated event or part of something much larger. As you understand the broader picture and work down, you begin to focus on the region, communities, and streets. At this point, the issue changes a bit. It’s not just about having a fire, we also want to know what resources are present in the area, what potential impacts could occur, are there any particularly vulnerable populations, etc. We need more granular information. Think of this like an elevator starting about 100 miles above the ground and gradually moving down towards the ground…as you get closer to the ground the problems or challenges get more and more specific. As a result, we need to have sources of information that are also more granular and specific to our area of attention.
We are fortunate in that web-browsers can have multiple sites open at once. We can use the browser’s basic function so that we can scroll through information and access it quickly. Our intent here is to identify a number of sites that would provide decent information for those working in an operations centre or other form of information gathering centre that will be useful in getting an understanding of the event.
The Lists
Each bullet in the list opens a new tab on your browser. Each link has a very quick explanation as to what you are looking for.
Hurricane
The following are the sites recommended from most general to most specific for setting up the overall board for hurricanes and tracking an incoming storm::
- TAB 1 – Overview: Tropical Tidbits: Hurricane: HafsA Parent model then select the storm name
- TAB 2 – NOAA NHC Tropical Cyclones and Disturbances Page that will give an overview of all storms being tracked.
- TAB 3 – Tropical Storm Force Wind Seed Probabilities. You will access this from the page relevant to the storm. Scroll down and find the storm name.
- TAB 4 – Estimated Arrival of Winds. This is tied to each storm. Select the storm you are looking for and then scroll down to the various maps down below.
- TAB 5 – Hurricane Spaghetti Models will give you a range of possible tracks for the storm.
- TAB 6 – Environment Canada Hurricane Tracking that provides a view from Canadian waters.
The following sites are proposed for use when looking at potential impacts that may result of a significant storm:
- TAB 1 – Tide forecasts (this defaults to Nova Scotia) but you can select other regions. High tides can pose challenges in terms of coastal flooding.
- TAB 2 – Wind and Surf Maps and select the region that you need to cover.
- TAB 3 – Wind (comes up on default) but you can select other factors from the menu. You will also want to look at precipitation and accumulated precipitation.
The following are proposed for use when looking at infrastructure disruptions that may be happening in an area:
- TAB 1 – Power outages. This opens to the national site and you can work down from there to a specific region.
- TAB 2 – Road disruptions. Google traffic provides reasonably current conditions. You can also look to the road resources on the current conditions page.
- TAB 3 – Internet outages that can be important when looking at maintaining networked or remote connections.
- TAB 4 – General outages, including telephone companies, through Down Detector.
You will obviously want to tailor these and add whatever other sources you want. These are just a staring point. Our Resources and Current conditions pages have a number of sources that may be useful.
Wildfire
The following are the tabs considered when looking at wildfire conditions:
- TAB 1 – Fire Information for Resource Management (NASA). This will open in a global view but you can drill down to your specific area.
- TAB 2 – Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre provides a current national view and is also scalable.
- TAB 3 – Natural Resources Fire Risk map that is both scalable and has some ability to select dates.
- TAB 4 – Wind conditions from Windy.com. You will also want to look at temperature, rainfall, accumulated rainfall.
- TAB 5 – Live lightning map or thunderstorms from Windy
Use the infrastructure tab for hurricanes as a starting point for disruptions.