With vulnerable populations still prevalent in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Census Bureau has developed a number of tool enhancements to aid the commonwealth in the event of a disaster:

• The updated CRE for Puerto Rico Viewer now includes hazard risk data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Risk Index, showing potential damage from different types of natural disasters like hurricanes, landslides and coastal flooding. This is a relatively simple mapping tool and is a good first introduction for new users to the CRE data.

• Updates to the My Community Explorer for Puerto Rico include map layers for the new CRE along with additional business (County Business Patterns) and weather data sources (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to provide emergency response information in the event of a disaster.
  
  This tool displays active hurricanes, wildfires, weather watches and warnings, air quality alerts, storm surge risk, and temperature forecasts.
  
  Municipios and census tracts are color-coded to indicate the level of social vulnerability. Additional map layers can be turned on to display various social, economic and business indicators.
  
  In the example below, the diagonal line is the path of the late July/August storm which became Hurricane Debby. The highlighted areas along the coast indicate an excessive heat warning and advisory issued by the National Weather Service. 

All of this information and more were recently discussed at a CRE for Puerto Rico Webinar. The webinar was recorded in English and Spanish. It’s available in the Puerto Rico Webinar Series webpage.