The simple idea
Disaster data starts messy. One source records storm reports, another records fire perimeters, another records earthquake points, and another records declarations or damage summaries. DaedalMap keeps those records useful by tying each event to a stable place, then keeping the connected summaries and relationships beside it.
The result is a shared disaster record for questions such as what happened here, how often it happened, which places were affected, and which events are related closely enough to publish as a chain.
The disaster chain
Events
Individual records: storms, fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and other hazard observations.
Affected places
Each event is connected to the counties, districts, or other maintained places it affected.
Summaries
Yearly and rolling windows turn event history into comparable place-level baselines.
Event links
Strong source-backed chains connect events across hazards.
These pieces stay separate because they answer different questions. Event records preserve what happened. Affected places show where the impact landed. Summaries make history comparable across places. Links capture causal chains without treating every time-place overlap as proof.
More events change the record
When a hazard gains new events, the surrounding disaster record has to move with it. New hurricane, wildfire, flood, or earthquake records can change the affected places, yearly summaries, long-term baselines, maps, and published event chains.
Some feeds are only fresh situational evidence. Those can support live watches without changing the historical record. A source becomes part of the maintained disaster history only after the places, summaries, links, and method checks are updated together.
Why affected places matter
A point on a map is rarely enough. A flood report may matter by county, a fire may matter by perimeter, a hurricane may matter by track, and a tsunami may matter through runups along a coast. DaedalMap records the relationship between the event and the places it affected instead of forcing every hazard into one geometry shape.
Most public summaries use county-equivalent areas as the first common comparison layer. Larger state and country views roll up from that same base, so zooming out does not quietly switch to a different method.
Summaries preserve the history
The summary layer answers place-first questions: how many events happened here, how much area was affected, how severe was the history, and how the last decade compares with a longer baseline.
Scores stay separate from observed history. A historical flood baseline, an earthquake score, and a wildfire exposure summary can all use the same place layer while keeping their hazard-specific meaning visible.
Links stay strict
Event links are narrower than summaries. A link means one event plausibly triggered or directly generated another event, backed by source evidence or a clear hazard rule. Nearby events in the same week are not automatically treated as a chain.
Published link families include earthquake to tsunami, hurricane to flood, hurricane to tornado, volcano to earthquake, volcano to tsunami, and wildfire to flood. The shared graph favors precision over coverage, so weaker possibilities stay out of the public link layer until the evidence is stronger.
What researchers get
The disaster packs give researchers a bounded, source-backed record for event questions, place-level history, and selected causal chains. The geography work is already done: records carry stable place ids, summaries follow the affected places, and the public method separates observed history from interpretation.
- Event history: inspect the records behind a hazard pack.
- Place baselines: compare counties, regions, or countries across yearly and rolling windows.
- Source trail: inspect where the records came from and which method connected them to places.
- Disaster chains: follow high-confidence event links where the relationship is strong enough to publish.