100 Year Hurricane Visualization, Haiti Regeneration Initiative

We recently had an exciting opportunity to work with a senior research staff member at The Earth Institute, Columbia University to produce a single Google Earth animation with over 100 years of hurricane storm data which impacted the island of Haiti. The Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) is working with the Earth Institute and other organizations, such as the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), in a major collaboration project called the Haiti Regeneration Initiative which aims "to reduce poverty and natural disaster vulnerability in Haiti through ecosystem restoration and sustainable resource management." This hurricane visualization will used for part of the Haiti Regeneration Initiative course work at CIESIN.

CIESIN and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) are collaborating with Columbia’s Tropical Agriculture and the Rural Environment Program, the Columbia Water Center, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and other national and international institutions on an environmental restoration project in Haiti. The goal is the formation of a Haitian organization in charge of the implementation of the project. The role of CRED is to supply direct input for the development of a concept note and strategic plan based on an initial baseline study conducted by CIESIN.

The project’s goal is to create the initiative’s communication strategy at local, national and international levels through raising environmental awareness, tailored education campaigns and research on decision making in the face of environmental, social and economic uncertainty. CRED will also support the research and design of the structure and responsibilities of a local watershed management committee. The overall aim is to guide a national movement of collective action and behavioral change toward sustainable ecosystem management through an integrated development project at the watershed scale.

2010 Hurricane Season

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Atlantic 2010 (6 Mb)

Eastern Pacific 2010 (3.4 Mb)

Using NOAA tropical cyclone track data*, we developed a custom .NET application to create a visualization of the 2010 hurricane season, composed of the individual KML files for each storm. The overlays used are a compilation of satellite imagery of classic storms, creating a realistic look and feel. Size and scale are based on the NOAA storm data for the positions and intensity of each storm.

If you would like to read more about this project, check out our "Hurricane Visualization using KML" guest blog post on the Google Geo Developers Blog. Thanks Google Earth!

This video is an accelerated version of the complete Atlantic 2010 (KMZ) file animation. If you would like to view a quick visualization for Hurricane Earl in the Google Earth plugin, click here.

This application has loads of potential for further development, including displaying active storms, wind speed, wind fields, and projected paths in near real time.