Resources for Reducing Risk, Building Resilience
Reducing Risk
USGS provides the expertise, information, and resources to reduce the risk from natural hazards.
USGS provides the expertise, information, and resources to reduce the risk from natural hazards.
Science Application for Risk Reduction
Working to increase public safety and reduce economic losses caused by natural hazards.
Working to increase public safety and reduce economic losses caused by natural hazards.
Understanding Hazard Exposure
The Hazard Exposure and Reporting Analytics (HERA) website helps communities understand how natural hazards could impact their land, people, infrastructure, and livelihoods.
The Hazard Exposure and Reporting Analytics (HERA) website helps communities understand how natural hazards could impact their land, people, infrastructure, and livelihoods.
Science for a Risky World
The USGS Risk Plan includes recommendations for capacity building, case studies, and project ideas.
The USGS Risk Plan includes recommendations for capacity building, case studies, and project ideas.
Natural hazards occur frequently across the globe. Often the situation goes from bad to worse as cascading consequences can complicate response and recovery efforts. USGS hazard research can inform efforts to reduce the risks posed by natural hazards and help communities build resilience to future events.
Each year, dozens, if not hundreds, of natural hazard events take place in the United States. These events can vary in size, with some being incredibly large and affecting people across several states and communities, while others are small and localized. The more we know about hazards, the better we can find ways to help communities prepare for events, stay safe when they occur, and recover once they are over.
Media
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Risk Reduction
Because of the potential severity of a single hazard event, reducing risk is a high priority for everyone, including policymakers, community members, emergency managers, resource managers, utility operators, business owners, and planners. These stakeholders demand usable, user-centric information to support decisions for planning a resilient future and for responding to and recovering from unanticipated events in more adaptable and cost-effective ways.
Examples of our risk reduction efforts include:
Media
Our Science Application for Risk Reduction (SAFRR) project focuses on building partnerships to improve the use of natural hazards information. We identify information needs and develop new products that make our science more available to users such as emergency managers, community members, or decision-makers. These efforts increase public safety and reduce economic losses caused by natural hazards.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
Our Coastal Change Hazards (CCH) program works hard to foster effective communication, promote collaboration, build partnerships, and connect people with valuable scientific data. Coastal communities use our science to support decisions regarding development, economics, environmental health, and public safety along the coast.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
Our Risk Reduction Plan guides the development and delivery of actionable science that we use to help reduce the Nation’s risk from natural hazards.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Preparedness
The USGS helps communities prepare for natural hazards by connecting them with research and tools to help them prepare for the unpredictable. We conduct hazard research that supports preparedness efforts and provides insights into their potential destructiveness.
Media
The USGS has resources that can help you learn what you can do to prepare for an earthquake…before, during, and after. View our comprehensive list of resources that can help keep you safe in an emergency.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
Our country faces a wide array of natural hazards that threaten its safety, security, economic well-being, and natural resources. To minimize future losses, communities need a clear understanding of how they are vulnerable to natural hazards and of strategies for increasing their resilience.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
September is National Preparedness Month, a time for Americans to review their preparedness plans for disasters or emergencies in their homes, businesses and communities. It’s also historically the peak of hurricane season and the end of wildfire season.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Serving Diverse Communities
The USGS continues to actively improve the distribution of its valuable hazard research to all communities, particularly those that have been historically underserved, such as rural, minority, and native tribal communities.
Media
The island of Puerto Rico is subject to numerous threats from natural hazards, including hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, coastal and inland flooding, environmental contaminants, and freshwater scarcity, among others. USGS science can help citizens better prepare for, mitigate, and adapt to these hazards.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
Across the Navajo Nation, the negative effects of climate change are impacting soil and vegetation management practices to the detriment of ecosystem function, human health, cultural resiliency, and economic well-being. The USGS aims to improve revegetation techniques across the Navajo Nation and increase the capacity of environmental professionals in ecosystem restoration.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
In coastal Alaska, changes in snow, ice, and extreme weather events threaten human communities, critical infrastructure, valuable natural resources, and hunting and fishing livelihoods. To help address these needs, a number of workshops have been conducted with resource managers, tribal leaders, community planners, and scientists from tribes, state agencies, and federal agencies, with the goal of advancing coastal resilience and adaptation across the region.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Science
Uniting Western Restoration Strategies and Traditional Knowledge to Build Community Capacity and Climate Resilience on the Navajo Nation
Across the Navajo Nation, the negative effects of climate change are impacting soil and vegetation management practices to the detriment of ecosystem function, human health, cultural resiliency, and economic well-being. Conducting ecosystem restoration and shifting land management practices are critical elements of climate adaptation and dust mitigation strategies for the Navajo Nation...
Making Regional Climate Model Outputs for Hawaiʻi More Accessible to a Diverse User Community
The Hawaiian Islands are both biologically and ecologically diverse. To better manage and understand this diverse landscape, detailed, reliable projections of future changes in climate are needed by Hawaiʻi resource managers, such as land managers, conservation organizations, and decision makers. Global climate models (or “general circulation models”) produce projections at regional or...
Coastal Change Hazards - Stakeholder Engagement and Communications
An important role of the Coastal Change Hazards (CCH) program focus is to foster communication and information exchange, promote collaboration, build partnerships, and connect people with CCH knowledge, data, and tools. Coastal communities and practitioners need scientific information to support decisions regarding development, economics, environmental health, and public safety along the coast...
Partnership for Community Disaster Resilience
SAFRR is now a partner in the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project, a 3-year pilot collaboration to promote community resilience in the face of a wide range of public health emergencies.
Debris Flow and Wildfire Evacuation Messaging
What persuades someone to heed a debris flow or wildfire evacuation warning? SAFRR partners in emergency management are especially interested in the results of this study, now underway with Columbia's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions.
Filter Total Items: 17
Uniting Western Restoration Strategies and Traditional Knowledge to Build Community Capacity and Climate Resilience on the Navajo Nation
Across the Navajo Nation, the negative effects of climate change are impacting soil and vegetation management practices to the detriment of ecosystem function, human health, cultural resiliency, and economic well-being. Conducting ecosystem restoration and shifting land management practices are critical elements of climate adaptation and dust mitigation strategies for the Navajo Nation...
Making Regional Climate Model Outputs for Hawaiʻi More Accessible to a Diverse User Community
The Hawaiian Islands are both biologically and ecologically diverse. To better manage and understand this diverse landscape, detailed, reliable projections of future changes in climate are needed by Hawaiʻi resource managers, such as land managers, conservation organizations, and decision makers. Global climate models (or “general circulation models”) produce projections at regional or...
Coastal Change Hazards - Stakeholder Engagement and Communications
An important role of the Coastal Change Hazards (CCH) program focus is to foster communication and information exchange, promote collaboration, build partnerships, and connect people with CCH knowledge, data, and tools. Coastal communities and practitioners need scientific information to support decisions regarding development, economics, environmental health, and public safety along the coast...
Partnership for Community Disaster Resilience
SAFRR is now a partner in the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project, a 3-year pilot collaboration to promote community resilience in the face of a wide range of public health emergencies.
Debris Flow and Wildfire Evacuation Messaging
What persuades someone to heed a debris flow or wildfire evacuation warning? SAFRR partners in emergency management are especially interested in the results of this study, now underway with Columbia's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions.
Visualizing community exposure and evacuation potential to tsunami hazards using an interactive Tableau dashboard
USGS research for the Risk and Vulnerability to Natural Hazards project at the Western Geographic Science Center has produced several geospatial datasets estimating the time required to evacuate on foot from two tsunami evacuation zones (standard and extreme) traveling at three travel speeds (impaired, slow, and fast walking speeds) for the Island of O’ahu, HI. Tabulation of O’ahu...
Assessing Stakeholder Needs for Effective Actionable Science
A major goal of the Climate Science Center network is to conduct science and develop timely science products and tools that are directly relevant and useful to decision-makers and natural resource managers. A crucial first step in producing this actionable science is understanding the highest priority science and information needs of natural resource managers and planners. Through this...
Bringing Scientists and Stakeholders Together through ScienceTapes (Alaska Voices)
Communities, state and federal agencies, resource managers, and decision makers throughout Alaska need sound scientific information to better understand our changing world to make informed, science-based decisions that will shape the future. Scientists also need information from these stakeholders to understand what science questions need to be answered, develop research priorities, and...
Cultivating a Climate Science Learning Community Amongst Tribal Water Managers
In previous climate trainings conducted for tribes and pueblos in Oklahoma and New Mexico, impacts to water resources have emerged as a priority concern. Building on the success of past South Central CSC trainings such as Climate 101, this project will provide opportunities for water managers from 20 tribes to exchange knowledge in a series of workshops. These workshops, some virtual and...
Promoting Coastal Resilience and Adaptation in Alaska: Community Outreach and Engagement
In coastal Alaska, changes in snow, ice, and extreme weather events threaten human communities, critical infrastructure, valuable natural resources, and hunting and fishing livelihoods. Identifying how changing climate conditions impact Alaska’s coastal ecosystems, and how these changes may be tied to the ability of coastal communities to adapt to changing conditions, has been identified...
A data management and visualization framework for community vulnerability to hazards
USGS research in the Western Geographic Science Center has produced several geospatial datasets estimating the time required to evacuate on foot from a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake-generated tsunami in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. These data, created as a result of research performed under the Risk and Vulnerability to Natural Hazards project, are useful for emergency managers and...
Partnership for Community Disaster Resilience
SAFRR is now a partner in the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project, a 3-year pilot collaboration to promote community resilience in the face of a wide range of public health emergencies.
What are the earthquake hazards/risks where I live?
Determining your risk with regard to earthquakes, or more precisely shaking from earthquakes, isn't as simple as finding the nearest fault. The chances of experiencing shaking from an earthquake and/or having property damage is dependent on many different factors. The National Hazard Maps use all available data to estimate the chances of shaking (of different strengths and frequencies) across the...
What can I do to be prepared for an earthquake?
There are four basic steps you can take to be more prepared for an earthquake: Step 1: Secure your space by identifying hazards and securing moveable items. Step 2: Plan to be safe by creating a disaster plan and deciding how you will communicate in an emergency. Step 3: Organize disaster supplies in convenient locations. Step 4: Minimize financial hardship by organizing important documents...
What should I do DURING an earthquake?
If you are INDOORS -- STAY THERE! Get under a desk or table and hang on to it ( Drop, Cover, and Hold on!) or move into a hallway or against an inside wall. STAY CLEAR of windows, fireplaces, and heavy furniture or appliances. GET OUT of the kitchen, which is a dangerous place (things can fall on you). DON'T run downstairs or rush outside while the building is shaking or while there is danger of...
Why is it important to monitor volcanoes?
There are 161 potentially active volcanoes in the United States. According to a 2018 USGS assessment, 57 volcanoes are a high threat or very high threat to public safety. Many of these volcanoes have erupted in the recent past and will erupt again in the foreseeable future. As populations increase, areas near volcanoes are being developed and aviation routes are increasing. As a result, more...
What are the Great ShakeOut earthquake drills?
The Great ShakeOut earthquake drills are based on scenario earthquakes that could effect the area if they were to actually take place. Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills are an annual opportunity for people in homes, schools, and organizations to practice what to do during earthquakes, and to improve preparedness. These events are made possible through a collaboration between several agencies...
Natural hazards occur frequently across the globe. Often the situation goes from bad to worse as cascading consequences can complicate response and recovery efforts. USGS hazard research can inform efforts to reduce the risks posed by natural hazards and help communities build resilience to future events.
Each year, dozens, if not hundreds, of natural hazard events take place in the United States. These events can vary in size, with some being incredibly large and affecting people across several states and communities, while others are small and localized. The more we know about hazards, the better we can find ways to help communities prepare for events, stay safe when they occur, and recover once they are over.
Media
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Risk Reduction
Because of the potential severity of a single hazard event, reducing risk is a high priority for everyone, including policymakers, community members, emergency managers, resource managers, utility operators, business owners, and planners. These stakeholders demand usable, user-centric information to support decisions for planning a resilient future and for responding to and recovering from unanticipated events in more adaptable and cost-effective ways.
Examples of our risk reduction efforts include:
Media
Our Science Application for Risk Reduction (SAFRR) project focuses on building partnerships to improve the use of natural hazards information. We identify information needs and develop new products that make our science more available to users such as emergency managers, community members, or decision-makers. These efforts increase public safety and reduce economic losses caused by natural hazards.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
Our Coastal Change Hazards (CCH) program works hard to foster effective communication, promote collaboration, build partnerships, and connect people with valuable scientific data. Coastal communities use our science to support decisions regarding development, economics, environmental health, and public safety along the coast.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
Our Risk Reduction Plan guides the development and delivery of actionable science that we use to help reduce the Nation’s risk from natural hazards.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Preparedness
The USGS helps communities prepare for natural hazards by connecting them with research and tools to help them prepare for the unpredictable. We conduct hazard research that supports preparedness efforts and provides insights into their potential destructiveness.
Media
The USGS has resources that can help you learn what you can do to prepare for an earthquake…before, during, and after. View our comprehensive list of resources that can help keep you safe in an emergency.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
Our country faces a wide array of natural hazards that threaten its safety, security, economic well-being, and natural resources. To minimize future losses, communities need a clear understanding of how they are vulnerable to natural hazards and of strategies for increasing their resilience.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
September is National Preparedness Month, a time for Americans to review their preparedness plans for disasters or emergencies in their homes, businesses and communities. It’s also historically the peak of hurricane season and the end of wildfire season.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Serving Diverse Communities
The USGS continues to actively improve the distribution of its valuable hazard research to all communities, particularly those that have been historically underserved, such as rural, minority, and native tribal communities.
Media
The island of Puerto Rico is subject to numerous threats from natural hazards, including hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, coastal and inland flooding, environmental contaminants, and freshwater scarcity, among others. USGS science can help citizens better prepare for, mitigate, and adapt to these hazards.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
Across the Navajo Nation, the negative effects of climate change are impacting soil and vegetation management practices to the detriment of ecosystem function, human health, cultural resiliency, and economic well-being. The USGS aims to improve revegetation techniques across the Navajo Nation and increase the capacity of environmental professionals in ecosystem restoration.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Media
In coastal Alaska, changes in snow, ice, and extreme weather events threaten human communities, critical infrastructure, valuable natural resources, and hunting and fishing livelihoods. To help address these needs, a number of workshops have been conducted with resource managers, tribal leaders, community planners, and scientists from tribes, state agencies, and federal agencies, with the goal of advancing coastal resilience and adaptation across the region.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Science
Uniting Western Restoration Strategies and Traditional Knowledge to Build Community Capacity and Climate Resilience on the Navajo Nation
Across the Navajo Nation, the negative effects of climate change are impacting soil and vegetation management practices to the detriment of ecosystem function, human health, cultural resiliency, and economic well-being. Conducting ecosystem restoration and shifting land management practices are critical elements of climate adaptation and dust mitigation strategies for the Navajo Nation...
Making Regional Climate Model Outputs for Hawaiʻi More Accessible to a Diverse User Community
The Hawaiian Islands are both biologically and ecologically diverse. To better manage and understand this diverse landscape, detailed, reliable projections of future changes in climate are needed by Hawaiʻi resource managers, such as land managers, conservation organizations, and decision makers. Global climate models (or “general circulation models”) produce projections at regional or...
Coastal Change Hazards - Stakeholder Engagement and Communications
An important role of the Coastal Change Hazards (CCH) program focus is to foster communication and information exchange, promote collaboration, build partnerships, and connect people with CCH knowledge, data, and tools. Coastal communities and practitioners need scientific information to support decisions regarding development, economics, environmental health, and public safety along the coast...
Partnership for Community Disaster Resilience
SAFRR is now a partner in the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project, a 3-year pilot collaboration to promote community resilience in the face of a wide range of public health emergencies.
Debris Flow and Wildfire Evacuation Messaging
What persuades someone to heed a debris flow or wildfire evacuation warning? SAFRR partners in emergency management are especially interested in the results of this study, now underway with Columbia's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions.
Filter Total Items: 17
Uniting Western Restoration Strategies and Traditional Knowledge to Build Community Capacity and Climate Resilience on the Navajo Nation
Across the Navajo Nation, the negative effects of climate change are impacting soil and vegetation management practices to the detriment of ecosystem function, human health, cultural resiliency, and economic well-being. Conducting ecosystem restoration and shifting land management practices are critical elements of climate adaptation and dust mitigation strategies for the Navajo Nation...
Making Regional Climate Model Outputs for Hawaiʻi More Accessible to a Diverse User Community
The Hawaiian Islands are both biologically and ecologically diverse. To better manage and understand this diverse landscape, detailed, reliable projections of future changes in climate are needed by Hawaiʻi resource managers, such as land managers, conservation organizations, and decision makers. Global climate models (or “general circulation models”) produce projections at regional or...
Coastal Change Hazards - Stakeholder Engagement and Communications
An important role of the Coastal Change Hazards (CCH) program focus is to foster communication and information exchange, promote collaboration, build partnerships, and connect people with CCH knowledge, data, and tools. Coastal communities and practitioners need scientific information to support decisions regarding development, economics, environmental health, and public safety along the coast...
Partnership for Community Disaster Resilience
SAFRR is now a partner in the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project, a 3-year pilot collaboration to promote community resilience in the face of a wide range of public health emergencies.
Debris Flow and Wildfire Evacuation Messaging
What persuades someone to heed a debris flow or wildfire evacuation warning? SAFRR partners in emergency management are especially interested in the results of this study, now underway with Columbia's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions.
Visualizing community exposure and evacuation potential to tsunami hazards using an interactive Tableau dashboard
USGS research for the Risk and Vulnerability to Natural Hazards project at the Western Geographic Science Center has produced several geospatial datasets estimating the time required to evacuate on foot from two tsunami evacuation zones (standard and extreme) traveling at three travel speeds (impaired, slow, and fast walking speeds) for the Island of O’ahu, HI. Tabulation of O’ahu...
Assessing Stakeholder Needs for Effective Actionable Science
A major goal of the Climate Science Center network is to conduct science and develop timely science products and tools that are directly relevant and useful to decision-makers and natural resource managers. A crucial first step in producing this actionable science is understanding the highest priority science and information needs of natural resource managers and planners. Through this...
Bringing Scientists and Stakeholders Together through ScienceTapes (Alaska Voices)
Communities, state and federal agencies, resource managers, and decision makers throughout Alaska need sound scientific information to better understand our changing world to make informed, science-based decisions that will shape the future. Scientists also need information from these stakeholders to understand what science questions need to be answered, develop research priorities, and...
Cultivating a Climate Science Learning Community Amongst Tribal Water Managers
In previous climate trainings conducted for tribes and pueblos in Oklahoma and New Mexico, impacts to water resources have emerged as a priority concern. Building on the success of past South Central CSC trainings such as Climate 101, this project will provide opportunities for water managers from 20 tribes to exchange knowledge in a series of workshops. These workshops, some virtual and...
Promoting Coastal Resilience and Adaptation in Alaska: Community Outreach and Engagement
In coastal Alaska, changes in snow, ice, and extreme weather events threaten human communities, critical infrastructure, valuable natural resources, and hunting and fishing livelihoods. Identifying how changing climate conditions impact Alaska’s coastal ecosystems, and how these changes may be tied to the ability of coastal communities to adapt to changing conditions, has been identified...
A data management and visualization framework for community vulnerability to hazards
USGS research in the Western Geographic Science Center has produced several geospatial datasets estimating the time required to evacuate on foot from a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake-generated tsunami in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. These data, created as a result of research performed under the Risk and Vulnerability to Natural Hazards project, are useful for emergency managers and...
Partnership for Community Disaster Resilience
SAFRR is now a partner in the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project, a 3-year pilot collaboration to promote community resilience in the face of a wide range of public health emergencies.
What are the earthquake hazards/risks where I live?
Determining your risk with regard to earthquakes, or more precisely shaking from earthquakes, isn't as simple as finding the nearest fault. The chances of experiencing shaking from an earthquake and/or having property damage is dependent on many different factors. The National Hazard Maps use all available data to estimate the chances of shaking (of different strengths and frequencies) across the...
What can I do to be prepared for an earthquake?
There are four basic steps you can take to be more prepared for an earthquake: Step 1: Secure your space by identifying hazards and securing moveable items. Step 2: Plan to be safe by creating a disaster plan and deciding how you will communicate in an emergency. Step 3: Organize disaster supplies in convenient locations. Step 4: Minimize financial hardship by organizing important documents...
What should I do DURING an earthquake?
If you are INDOORS -- STAY THERE! Get under a desk or table and hang on to it ( Drop, Cover, and Hold on!) or move into a hallway or against an inside wall. STAY CLEAR of windows, fireplaces, and heavy furniture or appliances. GET OUT of the kitchen, which is a dangerous place (things can fall on you). DON'T run downstairs or rush outside while the building is shaking or while there is danger of...
Why is it important to monitor volcanoes?
There are 161 potentially active volcanoes in the United States. According to a 2018 USGS assessment, 57 volcanoes are a high threat or very high threat to public safety. Many of these volcanoes have erupted in the recent past and will erupt again in the foreseeable future. As populations increase, areas near volcanoes are being developed and aviation routes are increasing. As a result, more...
What are the Great ShakeOut earthquake drills?
The Great ShakeOut earthquake drills are based on scenario earthquakes that could effect the area if they were to actually take place. Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills are an annual opportunity for people in homes, schools, and organizations to practice what to do during earthquakes, and to improve preparedness. These events are made possible through a collaboration between several agencies...