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Science Trust, NASA unveil new real time hurricane monitoring tool

A new tool is now available to monitor the atmospheric phenomena of the season in real time thanks to the Collaboration Portal of the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the entities announced.

Forecasted storm trajectory, wind speed, expected rain and projected storm surge are some of the elements that can be monitored in real time every three hours in the portal.

“The collaboration of the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust and NASA is a portal-to-portal connection that uses ARC GIS servers,” said Leslie Maas-Cortés, director of the Hurricane Hub of Puerto Rico.

“Through the portal, NASA can share the GIS Web Services Group called NASA’s Disaster Program: a series of large datasets, maps or other tools that the Hurricane Hub of Puerto Rico can now access directly,” said Maas-Cortés.

Some of the information on the portal includes — among other things — flood maps, precipitation images, day/night images that indicate access to electricity and a landslide probability tool for the world. These sources of information are updated every three hours, so the information is in real time.

The Science Trust’s GIS team and the Hurricane Hub are working together to identify web mapping applications to digest NASA information and display it in a useful way for the public.

The Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency, a partner of the Hurricane Hub, will also install a collaboration portal from NASA to receive this same information in real time to improve direct response efforts to the areas of greatest risk.

Work is also being done to create ways to help make data more visible and easier to use for agencies such as PREMA and the public. This information can also be provided to our jurisdictions associated with the Hurricane Hub and regional collaborators in the Caribbean.

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This story was written by our staff based on a press release.
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