Introduction

There are numerous benefits in developing and maintaining a community-wide parcel database. Such a database can be particularly valuable in planning for and responding to hazard events. For example, New Hanover County’s GIS-based parcel inventory was instrumental in completing inventories in the vulnerability assessment case study. Another desired use of this database by county officials is for rapid, accurate damage assessments after disaster events. To maximize the utility of the parcel database for damage assessment purposes, a special user interface was developed to simplify and guide the data entry and analysis process in an ArcView® 3.1 GIS environment.

This section describes the damage assessment interface and provides a tutorial on how to use it. While this product was initially developed to support New Hanover County’s parcel database, the tool has also been designed as a stand-alone extension that can support other parcel databases. Read the tool description to determine whether this tool can help you in your disaster response and recovery activities.