Esri story map considers Katrina 10 years later

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the city of New Orleans, causing devastating damage and loss of life. A new Esri story map, “Katrina +10: A Decade of Change in New Orleans,” analyzes the damage from the storm.

“The story map is a new Esri medium for sharing not only data, photos, videos, sounds and maps, but for telling a specific and compelling story by way of that content,” wrote Esri Chief Scientist Dawn Wright in a blog. “This is all done with sophisticated cartographic functionality that does not require advanced training in cartography or GIS.” According to Wright, story maps are applications built from web maps, which in turn are built from web-accessible data.

The below map shows the physical damage in terms of buildings marked for demolition. In all, 10,317 buildings were tagged for demolition by the city of New Orleans. Following Hurricane Katrina, all properties within the city were reviewed for damage under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.

The heat map shows the density of houses deemed eligible for federally funded demolition through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Although not all properties on this map were demolished, the points illustrate Katrina’s extensive and pervasive physical toll on the city of New Orleans.

For this and other story maps, visit http://storymaps.arcgis.com/.