Module 3 Tsunami Evacuation - How not to get swept away!

This week’s two part lab introduced us to the devastating effects of Tsunamis.  The March 2011 earthquake, a magnitude of 9.0, off the northeast coast of Japan triggered a Tsunami which hit the coast of Japan minutes later.  While proper maintenance and organization of spatial data is important, it becomes critical during a disaster.  This lab focused on creating a structured file geodatabase.  This process, performed within ArcCatalog, allowed us to familiarize ourselves with the data and then logically organize and create what we needed using the tools with ArcToolbox.  This process allowed us to refresh our skills in metadata review, map projections, converting xy data into points and building raster attribute data for later use in analysis.  Once geodatabases were created we used the information to create radiation evacuation zones for the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant as well evacuation zones for the Tsuanmi.  The radiation evacuation zone was created using the multiring buffer tool.  The evacuation zones for the tsunami event were based on conditional raster analysis.  Roads, nuclear power plants and cities were intersected with the runup information to assist with evacuation decision making.  We were again able refresh our skills by performing queries and using VB expressions. By using Model Builder we were able to perform multiple tasks in succession and save our model for future use and sharing.  This week’s lab really began to tie together many of the skills we learned last semester and help us to solidify our knowledge and skills.