by Rebecca Walker — July 19, 2010—The National Weather Center has launched an online service called OnTheMap for Emergency Management, which provides rapid access to labor market information for local areas, affected by emergency events such as hurricanes, tornados, floods, earthquakes or fires.
Currently limited to hurricanes, the application will provide an easy-to-use tool that provides a live feed from the National Hurricane Center. When a storm’s leading winds make landfall in the U.S., the application will allow users to view the characteristics of the local workforce, such as the affected industries, the ages of workers and workers’ earnings with a simple click of the link.
The map viewer provides a graphical display of the current and historical location of the hurricane and the density of jobs within the land-based portion of the wind swath area. The cumulative wind swath for a hurricane is depicted by an orange outline.
The job density overlay is represented by the blue color-shaded areas within the hurricane wind swath. Darker areas represent higher concentrations of jobs per square mile.
The map viewer also displays a basemap for reference, which includes national and state boundaries and city and place locations as points.
