Frequently asked questions

No. HazardNet is an independent, non-commercial decision-support platform. Cyclone signals, flood bulletins, evacuation orders and emergency instructions are issued by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC), the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) and your local administration. Always follow them over anything shown here. The national emergency hotline is 999.

It is the model's severity index, scaled 0–100 for display. It is a continuous score of damage potential for the forecast unit and horizon — not a probability, and not a forecast that X% of the district will be damaged. The underlying value runs from 0.00 to 1.00 and is shown with the physics-based severity estimate beside it.

Severity is the model's damage-potential score. Physics severity is a formula-based estimate (for example a rainfall threshold for flood, an excess-heat factor for heat waves). Records published before 17 September 2026 computed it only for the hazard class the model selected, so it checked the model's magnitude rather than its choice of hazard; from that date all eight hazard classes are scored from the weather drivers alone and the class the physics track would have picked is published beside the model's. Confidence is the model's own certainty in that class: Certain at 0.85 and above, Probable between 0.70 and 0.85, Uncertain below 0.70. It does not measure agreement between the two tracks; when they diverge, both values stay visible on the card and the outlook should be treated as a question to verify rather than an alarm.

A refresh is attempted hourly and the published result is a committed snapshot. The prediction date is printed next to the map, and that date — not the time you opened the page — tells you how old the outlook is. If the pipeline fails, the site keeps serving the last good snapshot and labels its age rather than showing nothing.

Eight hazards: cold wave, drought, fire, flash flood, flood, heat wave, severe local storm and tropical cyclone. The interactive map covers all 64 districts of Bangladesh, and the published archive covers 507 sub-district (ADM3) units — 495 upazilas plus 12 city corporations — using HDX COD-AB boundaries.

HazardNet publishes 7- and 15-day outlooks, both driven by the same deterministic weather forecast window (Open-Meteo serves at most about 16 days). They are honest planning aids for seasonal decisions (irrigation, planting, stock movement), not storm-specific long-range predictions — read the 15-day outlook as the more uncertain of the two.

Partly, and the limits are worth knowing. The app installs as a PWA and caches map tiles you have already viewed, so previously visited areas can render without a connection. New forecasts, new areas and any export you have not generated before need a connection. Cached tiles are held in browser storage with a size cap, so a long time offline — or clearing site data — will empty the cache.

The export captures the current view: the layers you have enabled, the district or region in frame, the prediction date, the legend, data attribution and the disclaimer. Resolution and page size are chosen in the export dialog before the file is generated, and the dialog states what will be in the filename, format and date range.

An account stores the profile fields you fill in, your saved districts, your connectors and your preferences so the dashboard can show them to you. Environmental forecasts do not depend on your account, and no personal data is used as model input. See the privacy policy for retention and deletion.

Send it in: district, hazard, horizon, date and what you observed on the ground. Ground-truth reports are the only route by which the platform can publish skill metrics, and they are how thresholds get corrected. Use the contact page, which reaches the maintainers directly.