PDC Updates | Aug 19, 2010
Chiefess Kapi'olani School
This map of Chiefess Kapi‘olani Elementary School on the Big Island of Hawaii indicates that the school property is within the tsunami evacuation zone (pink), but only skirted by the FEMA-defined flood zone. This information will help Department of Education officials with emergency planning.

On August 16, Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) delivered 247 individual maps covering 295 schools to the Hawaii Department of Education (DOE), each of them depicting the natural hazard environment of a single school site (sometimes more than one school). The maps were provided in a digital format for incorporation into school emergency planning documents. Earlier, PDC also produced and distributed large-scale, poster-size maps of the state’s four county’s showing all the schools in relation to both natural hazards and emergency services, including police stations, fire stations and medical facilities.

Those large maps were originally created for Makani Pahili, Hawaii’s statewide hurricane exercise. They made it possible for emergency-operations leaders—local, state and national—to view the schools in the context of the exercise-only hurricane. The maps proved so valuable during Makani Pahili 2010 that they are to be supplemented with another series of generalized versions—omitting exercise-specific details—allowing DOE to post hazard maps of the state’s schools in two locations.

The project was undertaken at the request of Mr. Mark Behrens, DOE Safety and Security Specialist. Behrens wanted the site-specific hazard information to assist in emergency planning for each DOE school. Now, a hazard map will be included in each school’s emergency planning kit. “The original poster maps are for our emergency operations center,” Behrens said, “to allow our leadership to view the schools on each island and address damage, school closures and alternative learning sites. The other set of posters is for the board of education conference room. The school maps are for each schools emergency plan. They all are a big help!”

Geospatial Information Analyst Colin Lindeman produced the school-specific maps with the help of Geospatial Data Intern Abelardo Rojas and Ke Alahele Intern Kalei Miller. Lindeman also developed maps of Big Islands schools in an earlier project that identified indoor spaces that are safe refuges from volcanic haze, called vog.

Web resources of related interest:

  • An article on PDC’s website: Kids Need to Know About Hazards and Disaster Preparedness.
  • An article about PDC mapping vog-safe spaces (mostly schools) on the Big Island of Hawaii.
  • An item in the Center’s newsletter, PDC in Print: Maps that Lead to Places Safe from Vog.
  • PDC’s Natural Hazards and Vulnerabilities Atlas can display hazards for any place on earth.
  • Download Disaster Alert (PDC's World Disaster Alerts) on your iPhone or iPad free from iTunes or AppShopper.
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