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NCDP Training Newsletter
National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP)
Volume II | Issue 17 | May 2022
Geographic Information System (GIS) Mapping Tools to
Help Understand Your Community's Risks
FEMA RAPT Map
One of the first steps in disaster preparedness is to know your community's risks. With an increase in disaster events such as floods, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, earthquakes, and more, understanding risks will help you and your community visualize the historical and projected data to plan for preparedness.

There are several free GIS web-based mapping tools that allow federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial emergency managers and other community leaders in the US to examine risks that are prominent in their county. Below are a few GIS tools to evaluate risk:

  • The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT) gives emergency managers key data about their community, including population characteristics, infrastructure locations, and hazards, including real-time weather forecasts, historic disasters, and estimated annualized frequency of hazard risk. RAPT also has data analysis tools that provide in-depth, holistic information about population demographics, as well as the ability to add additional data layers such as local land use plans or damage reports.
  • The US Natural Hazards Index helps visualize historical and projected data for numerous natural hazards. The index was created to provide communities and public health officials with an overview of the risks that are prominent in their county, and to facilitate the comparison of hazard levels between counties.
  • Socioeconomic data and application maps were created by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University. These maps look at hazards such as droughts, floods, earthquakes, landslides, and more.
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Attend Upcoming Virtual and Instructor-led Training

The National Center for Disaster Preparedness, through its FEMA training grants, will be offering the following free upcoming trainings. We have also resumed in-person training throughout the U.S. while continuing to offer live virtual trainings on Zoom.

Virtual Learning (May - June)


In-Person Learning (May - June)
If you are a non-profit manager or working in government, we are looking for co-hosts for virtual and blended instructor-led trainings in:

Economic disaster recovery courses:

Housing disaster recovery courses:

For those who have previously contacted us, thank you! We are looking forward to setting up trainings in the coming months. If you'd like to request one of these training(s) in your community, send us an email at [email protected]. Trainings are available in a live virtual or an in-person training modality. A full list of available trainings are listed in our Course Catalog.
Earn your FEMA certificate with web-based economic and housing disaster recovery training
Take one or all of the economic/housing disaster recovery web-based courses and learn how to conduct impact assessments, learn about the impacts of pre-disaster planning, and learn best practices for post-disaster planning.

Economic disaster recovery web-based trainings:

Housing disaster recovery web-based trainings:

The National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia Climate School at Columbia University
has been awarded FEMA grants that focus on post-disaster economic and housing recovery. These free trainings include several collaborative activities, planning tools, tool kits, and geographic information system resources that learners can incorporate into their work practices.
This project is supported by Cooperative Agreements EMW-2017-CA-00043, EMW-2018-CA-00068, EMW-2018-CA-00069, EMW-2019-CA-00049, EMW-2020-CA-00064, EMW-2021-CA-00092, and EMW-2021-CA-00093 administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Point of views or opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
FEMA
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