Just as a zoo houses a menagerie of animals of exotic shapes and size, the disaster zoo hosts a number of tools, methods and geospatial functionalities. Much like the monkey exhibit, these functionalites, if not controlled and tamed, can quickly get out of hand (flung if you will), providing people with too much information to be palatable and useful. The hard working zoo keepers here at the disaster zoo work day in and day out to provide you, the user, with the right tools for the disaster at hand. 

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Prior to the development of the OPERA system, four needs were identified as critical for effective and improved disaster warnings:

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1. Actionable Intelligence: Relevant to individuals, intuitively understood, and received only when action is necessary.

2. Real-time, accurate information delivery: Easily disseminated through a wide variety of social outlets, spatially and temporally accurate, and verifiable in the field.

3. Easy access: Simple, intuitive graphical user interface that mirrors or integrates with existing platforms, is consistent across all software devices, and translates across demographic and economic boundaries. 

4. Social dissemination: Integrates with citizen science and dissemination methods to take advantage of interconnectedness of the modern world, allowing users to more easily share, recognize, and heed disasters.

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To accomplish these goals, each OPERA system is composed of two facets: awareness and response. The awareness portion includes an educational web page with a variety of sources useful for educating individuals about emergencies. The response focuses on a web app which can be shared as a hyperlink, and uses current forecasts and a user's location to aid in stepping them through an emergency safely.

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Right now this prototype has nurtured three primary functionalities: Route, Buffer, and Network. Much like superman, the jolly green giant and Pete's Dragon, these functionalities will swoop in to the rescue when needed:

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