Health Solutions Research Incorporated

Hsr has built a geospatial application, with the support of the u.s. Federal emergency management agency (fema) and the u.s. Geological survey (usgs) that merges health, social, and environmental data from numerous disparate sources to identify in advance the health needs of a disaster impacted population and communicate that information to emergency response managers (for planning, resource allocation, and tracking purposes) as well as to on-the-ground emergency medical responders (for care delivery purposes). This application, called the disaster health risk index, resides on the geomd platform.

Hsr developed the disaster health risk index to identify in advance the health and medical needs of a disaster-impacted population. This risk index has been tailored to several individual disasters, including hurricane, storm surge, wildfire, drough, extreme heat, flood, landslide, and is extensible to other natural and man-made disasters. The disaster health risk index can also be extended to co-incident natural disasters, such as flood and landslides, or extreme heat and wildfire. The disaster health risk index provides emergency response, public health, city and urban planners, economic development and community development organizations visibility in advance into the health and medical needs of the impacted populations as well as guidance on resource allocation to serve those needs as well as mitigate the disaster impact. The disaster health risk index has been extended to assessing the health impact of plastic contamination of our oceans and bodies of water.