The Briefing tab in the right panel is what you see first when the app opens. It is an AI-generated nationwide situational summary written by Claude (Anthropic's large language model) using live federal data feeds.

Refresh schedule: Regenerated automatically every 6 hours (00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00 UTC) by a Vercel cron job. The cached briefing is served instantly to every user — you are never waiting on the model.

Data the model reads (live, every cycle):

• FEMA Active Disaster Declarations
• NWS Severe Weather Alerts (Moderate and above)
• NIFC Active Wildfires (WFIGS)
• USGS Earthquakes M4.5+ (rolling 7-day)
• SPC Day-1 Convective Outlook + hazard intensity
• NHC Tropical Outlook
• WPC Excessive Rainfall (flash-flood risk)
• Currents API breaking news (mass-casualty, derailment, collapse, etc.)

What you get in the panel:

• Threat badge in the top bar — LOW / MODERATE / ELEVATED / HIGH / CRITICAL — color-coded summary of the national posture.
• Risk Rankings — top hazards by severity. Click a ranking to auto-activate the relevant map layers and drop a numbered pin on the location. In the floating demo card, drag the layer pills to change draw order for that briefing view.
• Assessment narrative — predictive, weighting forecasts (SPC, watches, Red Flag Warnings) alongside active incidents — not just reactive.
• Actions — priority-tagged operational recommendations (immediate / high / medium / low).

Ask AI — the chat tab next to Briefing lets you ask structured questions with full map context (active layers, current zoom, hazard backdrop). Examples: "Which Red Cross chapters cover counties with SVI above 0.9?" or "What's happening in Western Michigan right now?"

Build an impact polygon from active flood signals in your current map view, then count the residential structures inside it (FEMA / Oak Ridge USA Structures, filtered to OCC_CLS = Residential) and attribute each warning to a Red Cross chapter.

Open the drawer — sidebar → Active Hazards → Flood Impact (just below Flood Alerts)

Step-by-step:

• Union AOI — merges everything into one polygon, returns one residential-structure count. Fast quick-look.
• Per-Warning Report — each NWS flood polygon gets its own residential count, on-map label, and report row with state(s), affected counties, RC chapter(s), expiration, damage threat, and the full alert text. NWS only.

On-map label sample — each polygon gets a count + hours-until-expiration:

Report panel actions:

• ⤓ Download CSV — 12-column file: Event, Severity, Urgency, Certainty, DamageThreat, States, Affected, RC_Chapters, RC_Regions, HrsUntilExpiration, Residential_Structures, NWS_Link. Top of file lists the map view extent the rows were drawn from.
• ⎙ Print / PDF — opens a styled landscape tab and fires the system print dialog. Choose Save as PDF for export.
• Zoom to all — frames every warning polygon in one view.

PDF / print preview:

Sidebar groups all overlay layers. Click a layer chip to toggle visibility; click the gear / drawer to access per-layer controls.

• Red Cross — Divisions, Regions, Chapters (Master ARC Geography 2022)
• Water & Gauges — River Gauges (live USGS), River Forecasts (NWS AHPS), NWS Flood Polygons
• Weather — NWS Watches/Warnings, radar, alerts
• Storms — NHC Tropical Cyclones, SPC convective outlook, hazard intensity, conditional intensity
• Hazards — NIFC Active Wildfires, USGS Earthquakes M4.5+ (7-day)
• Reference — basemap, county/state boundaries, place labels

Click any feature on the map to populate the right-side Info panel with attributes.

• Top-bar search — type a city, address, ZIP, county, or place name. Press Enter or pick a suggestion to fly there.
• Home — top-right home button returns to the default CONUS view.
• GPS locate — uses browser geolocation to center on your current position.
• Pan / zoom — standard ArcGIS controls (drag, scroll, pinch). Hold Shift + drag to box-zoom.

• Basemap toggle — bottom-right button cycles through Streets / Topographic / Imagery / Dark Gray basemaps.
• Sidebar collapse — click the sidebar header (or press Space) to maximize the map area. All overlays shift with the collapse.
• UTC clock — top bar always displays current UTC time.
• Status bar — bottom strip shows currently-active layers + cursor lat/lon.

• Always set the map view first before generating a Flood Impact report. The tool reads only what you can see.
• Use Per-Warning Report for ops briefings — gives chapter attribution, expiration, damage threat per polygon. Use Union AOI for quick-magnitude estimates.
• Print to PDF instead of screenshotting — the PDF includes the full NWS Description + Instruction text per warning, ideal for handoff.
• Layer attribution — the right-panel Info tab shows the data source/agency for any feature you click.
• Reset to clear all overlays back to the default view (press R).