Norman, Oklahoma, August 31, 2008 -- A new online hurricane tracking tool with a difference is up and running on TV web sites across the threatened DMA's along the Gulf Coast and Florida. Online audiences can see it at work atwww.firstcoastnews.com and a host of other stations in the South. What's different about iMap (a Hurricane Threat Assessment tool from Weather Decision Technologies, Inc.) is that this display package shows output from a Hurricane Damage Assessment Model called HAZUS that shows the potential impact of a hurricane including number of buildings destroyed, number of people displaced from their homes, total economic loss, hospitals affected and other color-coded impact assessments.

The iMap Weather software uses the HAZUS model that begins running 72 hours prior to a hurricane hitting the shores of the US, and is based on the mostly likely hurricane path, as determined by the National Hurricane Center. Click on the "Hurricane Damage" top navigation tab then the red "Hurricane Damage" button.

iMap Weather allows online audiences to create a variety of new projections around projected impact and likely damage assessments.The service also includes up-to-the-minute data on current tracks, historical tracks, model tracks, satellite imagery, wind fields, NHC bulletins, auto-updates, buoy and Ship network data. Damage assessment data includes the predicted impact on residential housing, businesses, shelter needs, road and highway disruption, debris cleanup, and facilities at risk such as police and fire stations, hospitals, schools and energy production facilities. This data is presented in a very simple, "clean" style adapted for easy decoding by web visitors.