> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://api-v2-docs.disasteraware.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://api-v2-docs.disasteraware.com/mcp-server/historical-hazards-mcp.md). # Historical Hazards MCP The DisasterAWARE Historical Hazards MCP server lets an AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP-capable tools) answer questions about the historical hazard archive in plain language. You ask a question, and the assistant runs the queries, counts, rankings and lookups for you and explains the answer. This guide describes the server as of October 2026. ## What's in the archive * **About 680,000 historical hazard records** across 30 hazard types: earthquakes, floods, wildfires, cyclones, tornadoes, severe storms, hail, wind, winter storms, extreme temperature, smoke, volcanoes, tsunamis, landslides and more, plus man-made and security event types. * **Deeply enhanced.** Hundreds of thousands of records carry detailed measurements gathered after the event from authoritative sources (NOAA, NWS, USGS, FEMA, NIFC and other agencies, satellites and monitoring networks). Every wildfire record, nearly every tornado record, and about two thirds of flood and severe-thunderstorm records are enhanced; so are the smoke events, the earthquakes USGS mapped with a ShakeMap, the named tropical cyclones, and the special marine warnings. Population and economic exposure is available on about 260,000 records. What the enhancements contain: * **Floods:** gauge peaks above flood stage and the NWS flood category reached, surveyed high-water marks and flood depths, modeled depths, NOAA storm-event deaths, injuries and damage, FEMA flood-insurance (NFIP) claims paid, FEMA individual assistance. * **Wildfires:** final burned acres, fire duration, biggest one-day growth, peak personnel, structures threatened and destroyed, suppression cost, evacuation orders and warnings, and the smoke each fire produced. Every wildfire record also says *what kind of record it is* (a confirmed incident, a satellite detection, a burned-area estimate, a prescribed burn, …). * **Smoke:** smoke events with peak air-quality index (AQI), peak PM2.5, smoke days, and the monitoring stations involved. * **Earthquakes:** USGS ShakeMap intensity and peak ground acceleration, depth, and observed deaths, injuries and damage where NOAA records them. * **Tropical cyclones:** peak wind and lowest pressure, track length, landfalls (where and how strong), and post-storm station measurements (storm tide, rainfall, gusts, pressure). * **Tornadoes:** EF rating, NWS damage-survey paths, length and width, fatalities and injuries, damage, and warning lead time. * **Hail, wind and severe storms:** measured, reported and radar-estimated hail sizes, measured and estimated wind gusts, damage-survey winds, and a severe-convective-storm classification with its perils (hail, wind, tornado). * **Exposure:** population, vulnerable population, buildings and capital value inside each hazard's exposure area, plus humanitarian needs estimates. * The assistant can tell you, for any record, **where a maximum was observed** (which gauge, which station, which damage-survey path) and **where each number comes from**. ## Before you start You sign in with your **DisasterAWARE account**. That account must have the MCP access role added to it, which is a separate permission from DisasterAWARE web or API access. {% hint style="warning" %} Without that role you can still sign in, but every question will be refused as not authorized. If that happens, ask your DisasterAWARE account administrator or PDC account representative to add the MCP access role to your credential, then sign in again. {% endhint %} ## Connect your assistant The server address is the same everywhere: ``` https://mcp.disasteraware.com/historical-hazards ``` Sign-in is through a DisasterAWARE sign-in page in your browser; you never paste a password or key into the assistant. Sessions renew automatically. ### Claude (claude.ai and the Claude desktop app) 1. Open **Settings → Connectors** and choose **Add custom connector** (menu names as of October 2026). Custom connectors require a Claude plan that supports them. 2. Name it (for example "DisasterAWARE Historical Hazards") and paste the server address above. 3. Click **Connect**, then sign in with your DisasterAWARE account on the page that opens. 4. In a chat, make sure the connector is switched on (the tools menu under the message box), then ask a question. ### Claude Code ``` claude mcp add --transport http disasteraware-historical https://mcp.disasteraware.com/historical-hazards ``` Then type `/mcp` in Claude Code, select the server, and sign in through the browser page it opens. ### ChatGPT (web) 1. Go to **Plugins** in the left sidebar → **Add** → **Create MCP App** (menu names as of October 2026; ChatGPT has renamed this area before). 2. Set **Connection** to **Server URL** and paste the server address; set **Authentication** to **OAuth**. Leave the client ID and secret empty; ChatGPT registers itself. 3. Click **Create** and sign in with your DisasterAWARE account. 4. You may see a notice that the server advertises no scopes or OIDC; it doesn't affect sign-in. ### Cursor Add the server to `~/.cursor/mcp.json` (keep any servers already there): ```json { "mcpServers": { "disasteraware-historical": { "url": "https://mcp.disasteraware.com/historical-hazards" } } } ``` Then open **Cursor Settings → MCP**, click **Connect / Login** next to `disasteraware-historical`, and sign in. Ask questions in Agent chat and approve the tool calls when asked. ### Other MCP clients Any client that supports remote MCP servers over Streamable HTTP with OAuth (dynamic client registration, PKCE) can connect with the same address. For automated agents and scheduled jobs that can't use a browser sign-in, contact your PDC account representative. ## What the assistant can do (the tools) You don't call these yourself; the assistant picks them. Knowing them helps you ask better questions. | Tool | What it does | | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **get\_data\_coverage** | What the archive contains: hazard types, years, how much is enhanced, every filter and measure available, and the known caveats. A good first call if you're unsure what to ask. | | **query\_hazard\_events** | Finds events with filters (type, place, dates, season, magnitude, thresholds, nearby a point, landfall location, and any enhanced measurement) and sorts them, e.g. "largest", "deepest", "costliest". | | **aggregate\_hazards** | Counts, totals, averages, percentiles, trends and rankings, grouped by year, month, decade, type, country, state, county, basin and more. | | **hazard\_profile\_for\_place** | A hazard history for a country, state, county or radius around a point: which hazards occur, how often, in which decades and months, and the worst on record. | | **get\_hazard\_event** | Everything about one event, including all its enhanced measurements and the lists behind them. | | **get\_event\_details** | The *where* behind a number: the ranked list of gauges, high-water marks, stations, damage-survey paths or landfall crossings for one event. | | **list\_metrics** | Discovers every enhanced measurement available for a hazard type, with a description of each. | ### Need the records themselves? The MCP is built to answer questions. To bring the historical records into your own systems or analysis pipeline, use [`/historical-hazards-query`](/hazards/requesting-historical-hazards.md), which requires API access on your DisasterAWARE account (ask your administrator or PDC account representative). ## Example questions Every question below has been answered by the MCP from the archive. Start simple, then combine filters, places, time windows and measures. ### Getting started * What does the historical hazards archive contain, and how far back does it go for floods? * What enhanced measurements are available for wildfires? * Give me a hazard profile for Oklahoma. * What hazards have affected the area within 50 km of Moore, Oklahoma since 2000? ### Counts, trends and rankings * How many earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater have there been since 2000, by year? * How many confirmed wildfires were there each year from 2015 to 2024? * Which five states had the most tornadoes in 2024? * How many Atlantic hurricanes started in August through October, per decade since 1980? * How many severe convective storm records with a hail peril were there in 2024, by hazard type? * Show tornado counts by EF rating in Alabama in 2011. ### Biggest, deepest, worst * What were the three largest earthquakes since 2000? * What was the largest wildfire in California in 2020 by burned acres, and where does that acreage come from? * Which tropical cyclone had the lowest central pressure since 2000? * Which cyclone has the longest track on record? * What was the strongest ShakeMap intensity recorded since 2015? * What was the largest measured hail in Texas in 2023? * What was the strongest measured wind gust in Kansas in 2022, and was it measured or estimated? ### Floods * During Hurricane Harvey (Texas, August 25 to September 5, 2017), which flood reached the highest level above flood stage, and at which gauge? * How many Texas floods in August and September 2017 reached Major flood stage? * What was the deepest measured flood depth in Texas in 2017, and where was the highest high-water mark? * How much did FEMA's flood insurance pay for building damage in Texas floods in 2017? * Rank the top five states by flood-insurance building payments for 2017 floods. * How much FEMA individual assistance was paid for Louisiana floods in 2016? * How many people died directly in Texas floods in 2017, according to NOAA storm-event records? ### Wildfire, evacuation and smoke * Which California fires since 2015 destroyed the most structures? * What was the total suppression cost of California fires in 2020? * Which fire burned the longest in 2023? Which had the biggest one-day growth on record? * Which wildfire put the most people in evacuation zones? Which had the most evacuation orders? * Which wildfire's smoke lasted the most days? * What was the worst smoke event by AQI in California in 2020, and which monitoring station recorded it? * What was the worst PM2.5 smoke event in Canada? ### Earthquakes * What was the deadliest earthquake since 2000? * Which earthquake since 2010 produced the strongest ground shaking (peak ground acceleration)? * How many people were injured in earthquakes in 2023? * Which 2023 earthquake had the most vulnerable people inside its exposure area? * How many earthquakes affected Japan in 2011? ### Tropical cyclones * How many storms have made landfall in Florida since 2000? * Which cyclone made the most landfalls, and in which countries? * What is the average peak wind of North Atlantic storms by decade? * Which storm produced the highest storm tide at a post-storm station, and where? * Which storm produced the most rainfall at a single station, and where? * Which cyclone in 2023 had the most people exposed? ### Tornadoes, hail, wind and severe storms * What was the longest tornado path in Oklahoma? * What was the deadliest tornado since 2014, and what was its widest damage-survey path? * What is the average warning lead time for EF4 and stronger tornadoes since 2010? * How much tornado damage was there in Alabama in 2011? * What was the 95th-percentile hail size in Texas in 2023? * What was the biggest radar-estimated hail in Oklahoma in 2024? * What was the highest damage-survey estimated wind in 2021? ### Putting it together * Everything that happened in Texas during Hurricane Harvey (August 25 to September 5, 2017), by hazard type. * For the Texas flood with the deepest measured depth in 2017, show the five highest high-water marks and where they were. * Compare the hazard profiles of Florida and Louisiana: which hazards dominate each, and in which months? * How many 2017 Texas flood records each had more than $1 million in flood-insurance building payments? * For hurricanes that made landfall in the US since 2015, list each storm with its landfall state and wind at landfall. * Show the trend in confirmed wildfires in Oregon by year since 2015, and the largest fire each year. ## Tips for accurate answers * **Records are alerts, not unique events.** One real storm can produce several records (one per warning or area). Counts reflect alerting. Totals of damage, deaths and insurance payments automatically use each record's *own share*, so a total doesn't count the same loss twice; the assistant will say so when this applies. * **"In Texas" means "in or affecting Texas".** The same rule as [`country_code`](/hazards/requesting-historical-hazards.md#filtering-by-country) on the REST API. Place filters also include offshore records whose nearest land is the place you named. Grouping by state counts only records inside each state, so a filtered total and a grouped row can differ slightly. * **Count fires with confirmed incidents.** Wildfire records include satellite detections and fire-weather alerts; for "how many fires", ask for confirmed fires. Burned acres are the agency or perimeter size, not the alert area. * **Smoke events are their own records** (type BIOMEDICAL, sub-type SMOKE). Wildfire records can also carry the smoke attributed to that fire. * **Missing isn't zero.** A hail size or wind gust is blank when nothing was measured or reported; averages and percentiles cover only the records that have a value. * **Coverage grows over time.** Detection networks, gauges and satellites improved over the decades, so rising counts partly reflect better detection. Tornado detail starts in 2014; exposure covers about 40% of history (most recent years). * **Cyclone landfalls are tropical landfalls.** See [Cyclone landfalls](/hazards/requesting-historical-hazards.md#cyclone-landfalls) for the territory codes. Crossings after a storm became post-tropical are listed but not counted. US territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa) use their own country codes. * **Ask where a number came from.** The assistant can show the source of casualties, damage, burned acres and wind values, and the list behind any maximum. * **Enhancement follows the event.** Measurements are gathered after an event from agency and observation sources, so the most recent events gain enhanced detail once those sources publish. ## Troubleshooting | What you see | What to do | | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Sign-in works, but every question is refused as not authorized | Your account is missing the **MCP access role**. Ask your DisasterAWARE administrator or PDC account representative to add it to your credential, then disconnect and reconnect. | | The assistant asks you to sign in again | Your session expired; sign in again. Sessions normally renew on their own. | | The first question after a while fails or times out ("bad gateway") | The service was starting up. Ask again; the second try is fast. | | A question returns nothing | Check the place code and dates; ask the assistant to call get\_data\_coverage to see which filters and types apply. |