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Pedestrian evacuation time maps, population estimates, and cruise ship passenger estimates for USVI tsunami-hazard zones

Metadata Updated: February 21, 2025

These datasets support the conclusions in the journal article entitled " Population vulnerability of residents, employees, and cruise-ship passengers to tsunami hazards in complex seismic regions: a case study of the U.S. Virgin Islands" as described in the abstract below: Reducing the potential for loss of life from tsunamis is challenging on islands located in complex seismic regions given the multiple sources that surround islands, differences among islands in the amount of time to evacuate before wave arrival, and the high number of residents, employees, and tourists in tsunami-hazard zones. We examine variations in population vulnerability in island communities to multiple tsunami threats and use the United States territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), including St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix islands, as our case study. We estimate the tsunami-hazard exposure of residents, employees, and cruise-ship passengers on vessels docking at USVI marine facilities, as well as model pedestrian travel times out of inundation zones for 13 credible tsunami scenarios. Results indicate that the threat to life safety in USVI posed by tsunamis is not equal among the three islands, both in terms of the magnitude of people in hazard zones and the amount of time available to evacuate for the various scenarios. The number of employees and cruise-ship passengers in tsunami-hazard zones is orders of magnitude higher than the number of residents, suggesting that risk assessments that only account for residents are under-estimating threats to life safety from tsunamis. Finally, reducing departure delays has a greater impact than increasing pedestrian travel speeds on reducing the number of people that may have insufficient time to evacuate hazard zones before wave arrival.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date February 21, 2025
Metadata Updated Date February 21, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date February 21, 2025
Metadata Updated Date February 21, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/3b62380715829a68d2f90ea235026097
Identifier USGS:673e3b70d34e6b795de6c6cb
Data Last Modified 20250130
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id befe5443-63d9-478a-8e24-521c0d7bfd99
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -65.025,17.6792,-64.5783,18.3755
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 54d39d331f9a8ac4821356e2a0f8b7d5b25e190a167a41d05a5d9a092e076e05
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -65.025, 17.6792, -65.025, 18.3755, -64.5783, 18.3755, -64.5783, 17.6792, -65.025, 17.6792}

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