Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Science Rendezvous > 2009 Posters
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Historical Natural Hazards Data in Google Earth

Varner, Jesse¹,² and Dunbar, Paula²

The NOAA National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) maintains a database of information about historical natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. Long-term data from these events can be used to establish the past record of natural hazard event occurrences, which is important for planning, response, and mitigation of future events. Information is available about historic hazard events from ancient times (2000 BCE and earlier) to the present. In addition to existing tools for extracting and visualizing the data (web-based forms and ArcIMS interactive maps), the data is now viewable in Google Earth via KML (Keyhole Markup Language). The data available in this historical natural hazards archive includes several related datasets: significant earthquakes, tsunami source events, tsunami runups (locations where tsunami effects occurred), and significant volcanic eruptions. The related datasets are linked together: for example, the user can display information about the earthquake that caused a specific tsunami event.

The time range of displayed historic events can also be controlled using Google Earth’s time slider feature. Using Google Earth as a tool for displaying historical natural hazards data enables a larger audience to discover and use the data, with an improved understanding of the geographic and temporal distribution of historical hazard events.