Today is the beginning of National Preparedness Month, and Depiction is proud to be a member of the National Preparedness Month coalition. We have some very cool things coming down the pipeline in the coming weeks, but for the moment, I wanted to take a moment and go over the three basic steps for preparedness, as described at Ready.gov--along with some thoughts on how Depiction might be useful.

Step 1: Get a Kit
Your disaster kit should include some obvious things--food, water, medicine--and some less obvious things--hand-crank radios, pliers, dust masks. It should also include local maps. Remember, in an emergency, Google Maps may not be accessible, so you'll want to be sure to have paper local maps on hand. Also, a copy of Depiction with saved local mapsmight come in handy, because Depiction doesn't need to be connected to the internet to run. See everything that should go into your kit here.

Step 2: Make a Plan
Your family and business also need an emergency plan, detailing how you will contact each other in case of an emergency, where you will meet and how you will evacuate if you need to. In preparing for these things, Depiction can be a useful tool in visualizing locations where people are likely to be, determining a safe meeting place, and devising alternate evacuation routes if key streets are blocked. Here's a cool tool that can help your family build a plan online.

Step 3: Be Informed
What are the disasters you should be preparing for? Some of these are obvious--if you live in California, be prepared for earthquakes, if in Florida, hurricanes. But the obvious things aren't the only things--you should research your area to be sure you know all the potential hazards, and what the effect on your community might be if a disaster strikes somewhere else, but nearby. Depiction can be used to bring in historical data on weather, earthquakes and other potential hazards from many different sources, giving you a better understanding of what to prepare for. The links in the sidebar here may be a useful place to start.