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6 Data-driven strategies emergency managers should use for hurricane preparedness
When hurricanes threaten, seconds matter. The difference between reactive scrambling and a calm, coordinated government response often comes down to one thing: data.
Emergency managers across the United States are embracing a data-driven approach to hurricane preparedness—an approach that enables earlier decision-making, stronger coordination, and more resilient communities.
Here’s a six-step checklist to help your team maximize the power of data as hurricane season starts.
1. Identify the type of data you'll need.
Not all data is created equal. Start by mapping your specific operational needs to the types of data that support them and identify any gaps that currently exist.
- Before landfall, accurate and timely forecast data is needed to ensure optimized pre-planning of incidents. Properly geocoded databases of individuals with access and functional needs, mobility limitations, or language barriers can ensure equitable and precise outreach during evacuations. Updated flood propensity maps can help guide initial response plans.
- During the hurricane, real-time monitoring tools and dashboards with live data feeds linked to your emergency operations center guarantee full situational awareness. Access to data that is functional regardless of the weather conditions – such as weather radar, river and tidal gauges, or synthetic aperture radar (SAR) – establishes visibility on storm impacts at all times.
- After the storm, data that delivers impact analyses in near real-time are critical to ensure swift and successful recovery for disaster survivors. Observational flood maps (such as ICEYE’s Flood Insights) or damage heat maps (such as ICEYE’s Hurricane Rapid Impact) provide geospatial insights that can be linked to other existing internal datasets for more efficient responses, expedited delivery of assistance and improved disaster resilience.
Pictured above: Over the course of Hurricane Milton’s development, ICEYE was taking hundreds of images and gathering daily information on flood extent and building damage. Compared to imagery taken by aerial vehicles, synthetic aperture radar data from satellites provided more consistent and all-weather monitoring capabilities, enabling near real-time assessment events through cloud cover and darkness.
Once you know your needs for before, during, and after the storm, and have identified the gaps that exist in your current workflow, you can start to prioritize and source the appropriate data.
2. Not all data is created equal: understand the role of observational vs. modeled data.
Modeling and observation both play vital roles, but they’re not interchangeable:
- Modeling, whether for specific hazards, impacts, or forecasts, provides predictive insights for storms and their potential consequences. It can be helpful in the months leading up to a storm for scenario planning or in the days before landfall to hone in on the most likely outcome.
- Observations offer ground-truth confirmation during and after an event. It points to where the impacts are, not to where they could or should be. Due to its accuracy, data such as flooding extent and depth can be particularly helpful during an event for resource allocation or even well after the event for disaster resilience.
Ultimately, models can be updated and parameterized during an event, but they still represent a scenario view that is not grounded in actual conditions. Observational or evidence-based data is most helpful in understanding the actual impacts. Balancing these helps to give you a complete picture before, during, and after an event. However, when time is critical, observation-based intelligence can validate what models predict, helping you act with more confidence and clarity.
3. Ensure your team is trained to use the data.
Even the best data is only valuable if your team knows how to interpret, access, and act on it during a fast-moving hurricane event. Training ensures that data-informed decisions can happen quickly and accurately when lives and infrastructure are at risk. Here's why this matters:
- Faster Response, Fewer Errors:
Teams that are familiar with the right data and tools (like GIS platforms, damage assessment apps, or situational awareness dashboards) can work more efficiently during an activation. This reduces the risk of delays, miscommunication, and misinterpretation of time-critical information. - Confidence Under Pressure:
Hurricanes create high-stress environments. Training helps build muscle memory so that team members instinctively and confidently know which data to pull up and how to do so. - Consistency Across Shifts and Partners:
Standardized training ensures that all responders – from logistics personnel to shelter managers to financial assistance teams – work from the same data sources and interpret the same visualizations.
Having sophisticated data streams is only beneficial if your team knows how to utilize them effectively. Schedule regular training sessions and simulations that mirror your actual emergency workflows. Bring in data providers early to walk your team through tools, interfaces, and thresholds. Even simple data feeds can become powerful when your staff knows what to look for and how to interpret it under pressure.
4. Build scenario planning around real data
Scenario planning is your chance to simulate real decisions using actual data from past events, ensuring smooth operations even under stress. Your teams can run drills that incorporate:
- Historical observational flood data showing which neighborhoods were inundated in previous events and how deep the water got.
- Historical real-time road network data showing where rescues were delayed.
- Critical energy infrastructure impacts and how it impacted the response and recovery.
This allows you to pressure-test your protocols and uncover gaps before the storm hits, ultimately strengthening the decision-making when the time is right.
5. Check that you have resources in place
Great data won’t move the needle if the right tools, systems, and personnel aren’t in place and tested. Consider:
- Personnel Capacity
Do you have staffing in place to analyze and act on data during an emergency – and are there surge plans or cross-training amongst different groups to ensure no single point of failure?
- Technology and Systems
Are dashboards, insights, and reporting mechanisms integrated into your EOC – and is mobile field equipment ready for deployment, tested for offline capabilities, and linkable to the command center regardless of network failures?
- Coordination
Are GIS, communications, and public safety teams aligned in how data will be shared, used, and incorporated into their workflows?
Think of your hurricane readiness plan as a relay race: each leg of the team needs to be ready to run when the data is passed onto a team member. And ensuring the right resources are in place means your teams aren’t scrambling – turning preparedness into operational readiness.
6. Have data contracts - and clarity on how to use them
Many agencies secure data contracts with satellite or data providers, but it's essential to develop institutional knowledge on how to activate and utilize that data effectively.
Pictured above: These figures underscore the critical need for adequate personnel and preparedness to analyze hurricane data effectively and coordinate a response across such a vast and heavily impacted area.
Take Lee County, Florida, for example. This county proactively partnered with ICEYE for access to near real-time flood monitoring information ahead of hurricane season so that they can immediately spot critical locations that need emergency response assistance such as road closures, hospitals at risk of flooding or power outages, and many other critical pieces of information needed to respond to hurricane flooding.
“Data like this can be consumed in multiple areas of the enterprise, including Public Safety, Community Development, and Natural Resources. Each event presents a fresh opportunity to find new ways of using the data to inform our decision-making with more accurate data earlier in the event.”
—Benjamin Abes,
Public Safety Director for Lee County, Florida
Lee County's proactive approach of partnering with data providers serves as a model for how government organizations can leverage near real-time insights to take invaluable action.
Conclusion: A data-driven strategy is the foundation for resilience
As hurricanes grow more frequent and severe, the pressure on emergency managers to deliver faster, smarter, and more equitable responses only increases. A data-driven emergency response strategy isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s the backbone of operational readiness, resilience and recovery. From proactive planning around data to real-time response and long-term recovery, actionable data enables agencies to make faster decisions, minimize risks and better serve their communities - especially in a world where public sector teams are constantly asked to do more with less.
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