Seaside, Oregon, Tsunami Pilot Study Modernization of FEMA Flood Hazard Maps: GIS Data

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Federal Insurance Rate Map
(FIRM) guidelines do not currently exist for conducting and incorporating
tsunami hazard assessments that reflect the substantial advances in tsunami
research achieved in the last two decades; this conclusion is the result of two
FEMA-sponsored workshops and the associated Tsunami Focused Study (Chowdhury
and others, 2005). Therefore, as part of FEMA's Map Modernization Program, a
Tsunami Pilot Study was carried out in the Seaside/Gearhart, Oregon, area to
develop an improved Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Analysis (PTHA) methodology
and to provide recommendations for improved tsunami hazard assessment
guidelines (Tsunami Pilot Study Working Group, 2006). The Seaside area was
chosen because it is typical of many coastal communities in the section of the
Pacific Coast from Cape Mendocino to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and because
State agencies and local stakeholders expressed considerable interest in
mapping the tsunami threat to this area. The study was an interagency effort by
FEMA, U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), in collaboration with the University of Southern
California, Middle East Technical University, Portland State University,
Horning Geoscience, Northwest Hydraulics Consultants, and the Oregon Department
of Geological and Mineral Industries. We present the spatial (geographic
information system, GIS) data from the pilot study in standard GIS formats and
provide files for visualization in Google Earth, a global map viewer.

[Summary provided by the USGS.]