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This paper presents a rapid approach to assessing disaster resilience in Florida, particularly regarding Hurricane Helene (2024). This category four storm made landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast in September 2024. Using the Disaster Resilience Index (DRI) developed in this paper, the preparedness and adaptive capacities of communities across counties in Florida are evaluated, identifying the most resilient areas based on three key variables: population size, average per-person income, and the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). While the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) accounts for factors like socioeconomic status, household composition, minority status, and housing conditions-key elements in determining a community's resilience to disasters-incorporating a county's population and per person income provides additional insight. A county's total population is directly linked to the number of individuals impacted by a disaster, while personal income reflects a household's capacity to recover. Spatial analysis was performed on the index to compare the vulnerability and resilience levels across thirty-four counties vulnerable to Hurricane Helene's projected path. The results highlight that counties with high income and lower population densities, such as Monroe and Collier, exhibit greater resilience. In contrast, areas with larger populations and higher social vulnerabilities are at greater risk of damage. This study contributes to disaster management planning by providing a rapid yet comprehensive and reassuring socioeconomic impact assessment, offering actionable insights for anticipatory measures and resource allocation.

In an era where informed decision-making is paramount for sustainable development and effective resource management, the role of Earth observations (EO) in shaping economic landscapes cannot be overstated. EO, facilitated by satellites, sensors, and data analytics, is a cornerstone for evidence-based policymaking, risk mitigation, and resource allocation. SERVIR is a joint initiative of US Agency for International Development and NASA. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of relevant economic impact assessment (EIA) work, summarizes SERVIRs potential interests in EIA, and identifies how and where EIA could improve how SERVIR quantifies and communicates the impact of its services., Comment: 40 pages, 13 Tables and 4 Figures

Advancements in numerical weather prediction models have accelerated, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of physical phenomena pertaining to the dynamics of weather and related computing resources. Despite these advancements, these models contain inherent biases due to parameterization and linearization of the differential equations that reduce forecasting accuracy. In this work, we investigate the use of a computationally efficient deep learning method, the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), as a post-processing technique that improves mesoscale Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) one day forecast (with a one-hour temporal resolution) outputs. Using the CNN architecture, we bias-correct several meteorological parameters calculated by the WRF model for all of 2018. We train the CNN model with a four-year history (2014-2017) to investigate the patterns in WRF biases and then reduce these biases in forecasts for surface wind speed and direction, precipitation, relative humidity, surface pressure, dewpoint temperature, and surface temperature. The WRF data, with a spatial resolution of 27 km, covers South Korea. We obtain ground observations from the Korean Meteorological Administration station network for 93 weather station locations. The results indicate a noticeable improvement in WRF forecasts in all station locations. The average of annual index of agreement for surface wind, precipitation, surface pressure, temperature, dewpoint temperature and relative humidity of all stations are 0.85 (WRF:0.67), 0.62 (WRF:0.56), 0.91 (WRF:0.69), 0.99 (WRF:0.98), 0.98 (WRF:0.98), and 0.92 (WRF:0.87), respectively. While this study focuses on South Korea, the proposed approach can be applied for any measured weather parameters at any location., Comment: CNN, weather forecast, WRF, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, wind speed forecast, rainfall forecast

Issues regarding air quality and related health concerns have prompted this study, which develops an accurate and computationally fast, efficient hybrid modeling system that combines numerical modeling and machine learning for forecasting concentrations of surface ozone. Currently available numerical modeling systems for air quality predictions (e.g., CMAQ, NCEP EMP) can forecast 24 to 48 hours in advance. In this study, we develop a modeling system based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) model that is not only fast but covers a temporal period of two weeks with a resolution as small as a single hour for 255 stations. The CNN model uses forecasted meteorology from the Weather Research and Forecasting model (processed by the Meteorology-Chemistry Interface Processor), forecasted air quality from the Community Multi-scale Air Quality Model (CMAQ), and previous 24-hour concentrations of various measurable air quality parameters as inputs and predicts the following 14-day hourly surface ozone concentrations. The model achieves an average accuracy of 0.91 in terms of the index of agreement for the first day and 0.78 for the fourteenth day while the average index of agreement for one day ahead prediction from the CMAQ is 0.77. Through this study, we intend to amalgamate the best features of numerical modeling (i.e., fine spatial resolution) and a deep neural network (i.e., computation speed and accuracy) to achieve more accurate spatio-temporal predictions of hourly ozone concentrations. Although the primary purpose of this study is the prediction of hourly ozone concentrations, the system can be extended to various other pollutants., Comment: 15 pages, 4 main figures and supplemantary figures and tables

This study uses a deep learning approach to forecast ozone concentrations over Seoul, South Korea for 2017. We employ a deep convolutional neural network (CNN). We apply this method to predict the hourly ozone concentration on each day for the entire year using several predictors from the previous day, including the wind fields, temperature, relative humidity, pressure, and precipitation, along with in-situ ozone and NO2 concentrations. We refer to a history of all observed parameters between 2014 and 2016 for training the predictive models. Model-measurement comparisons for the 25 monitoring sites for the year 2017 report average indexes of agreement (IOA) of 0.84-0.89 and a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.74-0.81, indicating reasonable performance for the CNN forecasting model. Although the CNN model successfully captures daily trends as well as yearly high and low variations of the ozone concentrations, it notably underpredicts high ozone peaks during the summer. The forecasting results are generally more accurate for the stations located in the southern regions of the Han River, the result of more stable topographical and meteorological conditions. Furthermore, through two separate daytime and nighttime forecasts, we find that the monthly IOA of the CNN model is 0.05-0.30 higher during the daytime, resulting from the unavailability of some of the input parameters during the nighttime. While the CNN model can predict the next 24 hours of ozone concentrations within less than a minute, we identify several limitations of deep learning models for real-time air quality forecasting for further improvement.