By: Brynne Morris
It’s just over a week since Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Houston, bringing with it over 50 inches of rain and flooding the city. Even as the waters being to recede, there is so much work left to be done, and hazards continue to rise for the community.
In the aftermath, we have seen many of our customers and partners working together to bring up-to-date information to the city and residents of Houston on flooding, calls for aid, and potential hazards likely to arise as the waters recede. Here are a few up-to-date maps that we hope can help residents and relief workers navigate the path to recovery and anticipate any future needs.
Hazard map
After flood waters and lack of power caused a few chemical factories to explode in the Houston area, our team put together a map of all potential hazards and areas of high-risk and shared it with Houston officials. The map shows population density and overlays show chemical facilities, chemical plants, power plants, oil refineries and landfills. The base layer of the map also has the latest satellite images of the area and can be viewed when you zoom in on a specific neighborhood or hazard site. The data combined in this map was created at the request of the Houston Police, and we keep this up-to-date as a continued resource for residents and officials.
NOAA
NOAA put together this map showing aerial imagery of the immediate aftermath of Harvey. Individual images have been combined into a larger mosaic and tiled for distribution. This can be downloaded and distributed for planning. It has already received a large amount of traffic and is a valuable resource for those on the ground.
U-Flood
U-Flood, a crowdsourced project is an effort to map flooded roads in Houston and the surrounding areas. Citizens can report a flooded or cleared street just by zooming and clicking on the map. This is an easy way citizens and relief workers can update street level information as it changes. So far, 4,645 inundated roads have been reported.
Harvey Relief and Rescue
Harvey Relief and Rescue is a people powered relief and rescue project is powered by over 500 people and is still growing. The project contains two maps, a rescue map that tracks SOS calls with pertinent information to coordinate rescue efforts:
For ongoing recovery efforts, their relief map is an important way to get access to the resources locals may need — showing everything from shelters to volunteer opportunities to medical aid.
Catholic Charities
The Catholic Charities USA Disaster Operations Map is being used by disaster responders right now to identify the most vulnerable people and target interventions.
As the work continues, we will update this post with any other maps we find that may be helpful to the relief efforts. Are you using Mapbox to help in the aftermath of Harvey? Let us know on Twitter how we can help.
If you want to contribute to Harvey relief efforts, consider joining the OpenStreetMap US community to improve the map in communities immediately in the path of Harvey. This is an important way to have an impact from afar.
Hurricane Harvey recovery and relief maps was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.