Engineering for Natural Disasters: Government Resources
This guide is a collection of resources for applied engineering in times of natural disaster. This covers earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis.
Earthquake Hazards ProgramThis website is provided by the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Earthquake Hazards Program as part of our effort to reduce earthquake hazard in the United States.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)FEMA’s mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.
Jet Propulsion LaboratoryJPL is a federally funded research and development facility managed by the California Institute of Technology for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
National Earthquake Hazards Reduction System (NEHRS)The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) is a multiagency program established by Congress “to reduce the risks of life and property from future earthquakes in the United States.” The four federal agencies participating in NEHRP are the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). NIST serves as the lead agency for NEHRP.
United States Geological SurveyThe USGS is a science organization that provides impartial information on the health of our ecosystems and environment, the natural hazards that threaten us, the natural resources we rely on, the impacts of climate and land-use change, and the core science systems that help us provide timely, relevant, and usable information.
USGS Latest Earthquakes Feeds & DataUSGS provides several alternative ways to obtain real-time earthquake lists. Earthquake information is extracted from a merged catalog of earthquakes located by the USGS and contributing networks. Earthquakes will be broadcast within a few minutes for California events, and within 30-minutes for worldwide events.