Faced with potential flash flooding yearly in Hawaii, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Services Center needed an application that would improve emergency operations by providing real-time spatial data for flood response.

The result: A Flood Response Tool that converts real-time atmospheric and hydrological data into a mapping environment for display and analysis. As gages reach defined emergency level thresholds, tool users can be alerted to the warning, which may include precipitation, tidal, and flooding events. The centralized web-based application enables emergency responders to quickly determine the potential impact of floods for decision-making purposes.