National Hurricane Technology Modernization Project Fact Sheet

Hurricanes in the U.S. have resulted in more than 2,000 deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure damage over the last 20 years. Reducing this impact relies on state, local and tribal emergency managers (EM) to make informed decisions if and when their jurisdictions need to evacuate. Currently, hurricane risk mitigation relies on legacy systems that require significant resources and time to provide swift and actionable results, affecting EM’s decision-making process. In order to provide EMs a comprehensive planning and decision-making environment, the National Hurricane Program (NHP)—which links hurricane planning, hurricane forecasts and hazards, decision support tools and training—is making an effort to modernize the current systems. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funded an evaluation of these systems to identify areas for improvement. The evaluation showed that there are several existing gaps, which resulted in the NHP Technology Modernization project.