Servir Viz - Hurricanes in Mesoamerica
The time between June 1 to November 30 is known as the Atlantic Hurricane season. It is associated with the most devastating events in the western hemisphere. Therefore keeping in touch with the current condition of hurricanes is important for everybody.
SERVIR-VIZ in cooperation with its partners provides you a variety of near time or real-time products. These products cover the features aspects like weather, flooding, climate, sea-surface, temperature and a number of other factors. All these products are useful for predicting, monitoring or responding to hurricanes.
Moreover the SERVIR-VIZ Data Portal and SERVIR-VIZ tools provide you access to the live map services and downloadable data. With these services, you can know about the landslide susceptibilities, transportation routes, places where population is centred, and different types of critical information. All this information is useful for responding and mitigating to disasters.
For viewing the latest information about weather conditions just click on the Real Time Image Viewer. The information which you get on doing so is collected from a number of sources like GOES-12 satellite, Now Casts, and short-term forecasts.
You can also search for the SERVIR Data Portal for keywords like, “Hurricanes”, “Disasters”, and/or” weather to view and download related data. Downloading the SERVIR-VIZ for overlaying the multiple weather products along with information dynamic flood updates, landslide susceptibility, transportation routes, and other pertinent information.
The major events in 2007, which are covered by SERVIR-VIZ are as follows.
Hurricane DEAN in August
DEAN was the first category 5 hurricane, which made a landfall in Americas after a long interval from 1992 to 2007. DEAN made a landfall on Yucatan Peninsula Mexico. The time was the early hours on Tuesday, August 21, 2007. It was as such predicted that DEAN would cause a massive destruction.
As the disaster response is one of the key capabilities of Regional Visualization Monitoring System[SERVIR]. During this time, SERVIR’s partner agencies took up the task of acquiring relevant satellite based resources for monitoring Dean’s progression across the region. SERVIR also received request for data of Dean’s approach by Belize’s Land Information Centre on behalf of the nation’s National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO). The Belize’s Land Information Centre is the LIC SERVIR’s national focal institution in Belize.
The international Character on Space and Major Disasters was appealed immediately after Dean's landfall and CATHALAC was made the Project Manager under the Character. The responsibilities for providing decision support to national disaster response agencies were given to it.
The resources which have been destined below the Character consist data that is to be acquired from satellites. These satellites are operated form the Argentinean Space Agency (CONAE), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), among others.
Even though Dean's passage through the Yucatan Peninsula was fast, and the assessments of the hurricane's damage are still on (As on August 23, Thursday). SERVIR”s partner agencies are still collecting satellite data for damages done by Dean.
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