FEMA Hazus Team Releases New and Updated Risk Assessment Tools

The Hazus Team at FEMA released new and updated open source risk assessment tools, covering hazards like floods and hurricanes.

Hazus is a nationally applicable standardized methodology that contains models for estimating potential losses from earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Hazus uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to estimate physical, economic, and social impacts of disasters. Two of the new or updated Hazus tools cover floods. The Flood Hazard Import Tool (FHIT) is a newly developed open source tool that allows Hazus users to rapidly access and incorporate publicly available coastal flood hazard data from ADCIRC (Advanced Circulation Model), and eventually other sources, into a Hazus flood analysis. The Flood Assessment Structure Tool (FAST) is an open source tool that rapidly analyzes building-level flood risk using the Hazus flood model methodology. FEMA designed FAST to make building-specific flood risk assessments quicker, simpler, and more resource effective. The tool was updated to include Average Annualized Loss calculation functionality. Another tool, the Hurricane Hazard Import Tool (HHIT), is an open source tool that allows Hazus users to rapidly access and incorporate authoritative hurricane hazard data from Hurrevac into a Hazus hurricane analysis. The tool was updated so that it runs with Miniforge instead of Anaconda, ensuring that it remains freely available. Finally, the Hazus Export Tool is an open source tool used for a quick and easy extraction of Hazus results into readily usable data formats. This aids in visualizing risk assessment results to support risk communication and a deeper analysis. The tool was also updated to include the Hazus Batch Export Tool. Read more about and access the Hazus tools at FEMA.