Florida Google Maps Hurricane Mashup

With the 2006 hurricane season now officially underway in the state of Florida a local newspaper is helping residents of this state to prepare for the potential of storms using Google Maps. The Sarasota Herald Tribune created IBISEYE.com, which although still in Beta, is a great all around mashup with a huge amount of data that includes every hurricane to hit Florida since 1851! Also available is a "risk estimator" that attempts to figure out how many buildings would be affected if any given storm were to hit the state of Florida today (this works for storms since 1960).

This Google Maps mashup can also be used when storms are approaching to gain live weather alerts for the gulf coast, as well as the ability to add "damage reports" to the map by zooming in to a property on a "neighborhoods" map. In the works are user-submitted image galleries, and geocoded AP news stories relating to hurricanes so they appear in relation to where the user is on the map. Charlie Szymanski, Online Producer for the Sarasota Herald Tribune, is the person that contacted me about this mashup and it is obvious that he and his team understand how Google Maps can be used in a news and media website.

Related:
How Google Maps is used in News & Media - Part 1
How Google Maps is used in News & Media - Part 2
More Hurricane and Storm Google Maps Mashups

Technorati Tags: [hurricane], [Florida], [Google Maps Mania], [Google Maps mashup], [mashup], [Google Maps]