• Graduate student develops emergency communication Twitter app

    A graduate student at the University of Colorado has developed a smartphone app that makes it easier for first responders and emergency personnel to communicate via Twitter during disasters; without a standardized syntax, emergency personnel, affected individuals, information officers, and journalists were having trouble communicating on Twitter

  • Australia’s disasters cost insurers $25.6 billion

    The series of disasters that struck Australia this year including the Queensland floods, Cyclone Yasi, and the New Zealand earthquake has hit local insurers particularly hard with a combined loss of $25.6 billion

  • Safe, efficient cookstoves for earthquake survivors

    316,000 people were killed and more than one million made homeless by the 12 January 2010 magnitude 7.0 quake that left the capital city of Port-au-Prince in ruins; many of the displaced Haitians still live in tent cities, where even simple tasks such as cooking are a challenge; scientists hope to find the safest and most energy-efficient way for earthquake survivors to cook

  • Evaluating California earthquake forecasts

    The Southern California Earthquake Center held a competition among seven different earthquake forecasts; an analysis of the competition shows that earthquake prediction remains an imperfect science, but the best forecasts are about ten times more accurate than a random prediction; the findings should help researchers both develop better earthquake forecasts and improve their tools for assessing those forecasts

  • Protecting structures against firebrand attack

    NIST engineers have built a device that bellows showers of glowing embers, or firebrands, to test how structures can withstand this destructive aspects of wild fires; in Japan, where the device is now used in a test facility, firebrands are a growing peril that accounts for half of the nation’s ten most costly fires

  • Predicting race and ethnicity from irises now possible

    Conventional wisdom holds that irises, like fingerprints, are unique to each individual and have little similarities between ethnic groups or gender, but a groundbreaking new study indicates that biometric scanners can actually predict race and gender based on iris texture alone; the study’s findings are important in that it opens new avenues for research that previously were not thought possible

  • U.S. intervention hinders disaster recovery, says reinsurance giant

    Lloyd’s of London, the largest reinsurer of U.S. risk, said the federal government’s intervention in the insurance market could hinder recovery efforts following natural disasters; “We don’t believe that the U.S. has the balance between industry and government intervention right, you have government intervention in federal and state level, it demonstrates this is not a sustainable way to proceed,” said Lloyds general counsel

  • Disaster scams on the rise

    In the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, fraudsters have increasingly rushed in to take advantage of the outpouring of charitable donations; speaking on a panel at an international symposium on organized fraud in Australia, the Department of Justice’s deputy chief for strategy and policy in the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division, said scammers had websites for fake charities in place before predicted disasters had even hit

  • Connecticut town considers charging centers for power outages

    Following Hurricane Irene which left thousands without power up and down the East Coast, a town in Connecticut is considering building several charging stations for residents to power up their hand held electronics during a natural disaster or prolonged power outage

  • Georgia shows app that prepares state residents, guides them to safety

    New Ready Georgia mobile app uses geo-location to deliver alerts, create emergency plans, and show shelter locations; from up-to-the-minute weather and hazard alerts based on a user’
    ‘s location, to customizable emergency preparedness checklists, the app combines a set of features not previously available in one mobile application

  • NIST offers comprehensive risk assessment guidance for federal information systems

    NIST has released two new publications dealing with risk assessment; one is the authoritative source of comprehensive risk assessment guidance for federal information systems, the other, an update to a March 2011 publication, focuses exclusively on risk assessments

  • Saving victims trapped under concrete

    New tool allow first responders to reach those trapped beneath concrete more quickly; the tool generates a high-energy jolt to create a contained hole in the concrete; a series of these holes allows the creation of an area large enough to deliver vital supplies such as food, water, and medicine to victims before first responders are able to get victims to safety.

  • Better understanding of how tsunamis work

    One of the obstacles to understanding how tsunamis work is the notion that it is the first wave that is the worst; researchers show that this is not the case, and that the second, third, or even fourth wave are often the most destructive

  • Proton-based transistor could let machines communicate with humans

    Devices humans use, from light bulbs to iPods, send information using electrons; human bodies and all other living things, on the other hand, send signals and perform work using ions or protons; researchers build a novel transistor that uses protons, creating a key piece for devices that can communicate directly with living things

  • Tsunami-predicting software to help protect coastal communities

    New software has been developed to help protect vulnerable coastal communities from the destruction of a tsunami; the mathematical model has created significant interest in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan six months ago