Federal data guide
Disasters & Natural Hazards Data
A guide to the federal datasets behind disasters and natural hazards — FEMA’s disaster declarations, recovery and mitigation spending, and flood insurance; the NWS warnings and NOAA storm and climate records; and the USGS earthquake and water data. Each links to a full deep-dive, and the cross-dataset analyses trace a hazard from warning to federal response.
Disaster data in the US spans the whole arc of an event — the hazard, the warning, the damage, the federal response, and the long tail of insurance and mitigation. FEMA records which events became federal disasters, how recovery and mitigation dollars were spent, and the flood-insurance claims; the National Weather Service issues the warnings and NOAA archives what struck and the climate context; and the USGS tracks earthquakes and water. The cross-dataset guides below reconstruct the full cycle, joining these on place and time.
FEMA: declarations, recovery & mitigation
Which events became federal disasters, and how the money was spent.
- FEMA Disaster Declarations: The Federal Database Behind 70 Years of US Natural Disasters — every declared disaster since 1953
- FEMA Public Assistance: The Federal Record of How Disaster Recovery Money Is Spent — the recovery-spending record
- FEMA Hazard Mitigation: The Federal Record of Spending to Prevent the Next Disaster — mitigation grants
- FEMA Firefighter Grants: The Federal Record of Funding the Fire Service — fire-service readiness grants
Flood insurance (NFIP)
The federal flood-insurance program and its claims.
- NFIP Flood Insurance Data: The Federal Program Behind $20 Billion in Flood Claims and the National Flood Hazard Layer — the flood-insurance program
- Repetitive Loss: What FEMA’s Flood Insurance Claims Data Reveals About 2.7 Million Paid Claims — the paid-claims record
Weather & geologic hazards (NWS, NOAA, USGS)
Warnings, the storms that follow, and the earth itself.
- NWS Weather Alerts: The Federal Feed of Every Active Warning and Watch — live warnings and watches
- NOAA Storm Events Database: The Federal Record Behind 50 Years of US Weather Disasters — what actually struck, with damage
- NOAA Climate Data: The National Centers for Environmental Information Behind 130 Years of Temperature Records and Climate Normals — the climate context
- Seismic record: using the USGS earthquake catalog to analyze fault risk and induced seismicity — the earthquake catalog
- USGS Water Resources: The National Water Information System Behind Flood Prediction, Drought Monitoring, and Aquifer Depletion Tracking — streamflow, flood, and drought data
Cross-dataset analyses
Synthesis guides that trace a hazard end to end.
- The Disaster Cycle: Tracing One Catastrophe Through FEMA Federal Data — declaration → recovery → mitigation → NFIP
- The Natural Hazards Picture: From NWS Warning to NOAA Storm to FEMA Declaration — warning → impact → federal response
More guides at Federal data guides, or browse all writing and the full dataset catalog.