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With hurricane season around the corner, Iridium offers first-response communication system
Hurricane Katrina knocked off most of the communication system in the Gulf — but one technology came to the rescue: satellite communication; Iridium now offers satellite communication-based first response communication package
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NCX provides service for greater IT security
This Newport Beach business risk management company will now provide its services to small and medium sized companies through its new MyCSO product
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Ex-FEMA director joins OnScreen Technologies
Michael Brown has found a new job as a strategist
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Is San Francisco prepared for the next Big One?
One hundred years ago the earthquake which hit San Francisco killed 3,000, left more than 200,000 homeless, and destroyed more than 28,000 buildings. Is the city ready for the next one?
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Bay Area businesses preparing continuity plans in event of earthquake
The big one was 100 years ago; another one is in the forecast, and businesses are preparing for the worst
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Analysis: FEMA will stay in DHS
There is a post-Katrina debate in Congress over whether or not FEMA should be made an independent agency; better to leave FEMA in DHS — and give it even more responsibilities and capabilities as the nation’s premier disaster response outfit; the important thing is to appoint a competent, selfless director who will whole-heartedly embrace the reality of FEMA as part of DHS and who will observe the proper chain of command
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On-line avian flu preparedness course available
Continuing education: Now there is an online course on how to prepare your company for the avian flu; take a look
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They try harder
Jay Leno said that they found a man in a cave in China whose handwriting was so small, he could put half a chapter of the New Testament on one strand of human hair; but this was only his hobby: His vocation was to write the fine print on rent-a-car contracts; well, Avis Europe hires a U.K. business continuity company to beef up disaster recovery systems in Avis’s Frankfurt, Germany, data center, so all these rent-a-car contracts could survive a disaster
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The meanings of resilience
The meaning of “is”: Many equate “business continuity” with “resilience” — but there are at least four different meanings business people attach to “resilience”; you should address all of them
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Hospital uses adaptive WAN, synchronous backup for efficient, reliable recovery
Here is an example of a hospital implementing a robust disaster recovery system relying on WAN-based synchronous back-up which is at the same time HIPAA compliant
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Reinsurer builds up network, back systems to prepare for any eventuality
This reinsurer has offices in Bermuda, London, Boston, and Paris, and its back-up experiences should be of interest
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Business continuity awareness week
A letter to the business community from the organizers of the 2006 business continuity awareness week
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New device allows seeing through fire, smoke, haze
As emergency units rush to the scene of a disaster, they are often frustrated by the obscuring effects of fire, smoke, and haze — all making informed decision making more difficult; a Pennsylvania company is developing a device to help such first responders see through these obstacles
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The long view
Designing the Coastal City of the Future
Boston is situated along the Gulf of Maine, which is warming faster than 99 percent of the ocean due, in part, to changing sea patterns from melting ice in Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. Coupled with increased heat and precipitation, the rising sea level is threatening the low-lying city, much of which was built on landfill over the past 300 years along a 50-square-mile harbor. To save the 685,000-person city, the local government is calling on architects to help implement one of the most ambitious municipal resiliency plans in the United States: Climate Ready Boston. Launched in 2016 by Mayor Martin J. Walsh, Climate Ready Boston is an initiative to prepare the city for the long-term impacts of climate change.
Bans on Rebuilding in Disaster-Prone Areas Ignore Homeowners Preferences – Raising Costs Works Better
As California’s wildfire season intensifies, a growing number of residents in the state want to ban people from building in areas at greatest risk. That’s because taxpayers bear the burden of protecting homes in dangerous areas when fire breaks out – and they often help foot the bill when it’s time to rebuild. A recent assessment showed that 1 in 4 Californians live in an area at “high risk” of wildfire. And people tend to want to rebuild in the same spot that was hit by a disaster. Alexander Smith writes that as a behavioral economist who studies the psychology of decision-making, he tries to understand people’s motivations before taking a position in a policy debate. He believes there’s a better way for policymakers to achieve the same goal of getting people to avoid building in disaster-prone areas without forcing people from their homes.
How Climate Change Will Help China and Russia Wage Hybrid War
Americans and Europeans may not yet notice the existential threat climate change poses, but they had better pay attention to it. Their adversaries could use climate change as a new front in hybrid warfare. “In several African countries we’re already seeing rural settlements disrupted by development projects funded and executed by China,” Howard Jones, CEO of the Born Free Foundation. Told Defense One’s Elizabeth Braw. “Those projects include altering the flows of entire river systems and putting good land to use for export of food and resources to China. Put this together with climate change and pre-existing poverty and we have a huge problem. And why would China care?” Braw adds: “Indeed, China, Russia, and other hostile states can use climate change as a new tool in blended aggression (often called hybrid warfare) against the West.”
California Wildfires Signal the Arrival of a Planetary Fire Age
Another autumn, more fires, more refugees and incinerated homes. For California, flames have become the colors of fall. Stephen Pyne writes that free-burning fire is the proximate provocation for the havoc, since its ember storms are engulfing landscapes. But in the hands of humans, combustion is also the deeper cause. Modern societies are burning lithic landscapes - once-living biomass now fossilized into coal, gas and oil - which is aggravating the burning of living landscapes. “Add up all the effects, direct and indirect – the areas burning, the areas needing to be burned, the off-site impacts with damaged watersheds and airsheds, the unraveling of biotas, the pervasive power of climate change, rising sea levels, a mass extinction, the disruption of human life and habitats – and you have a pyrogeography that looks eerily like an ice age for fire,” he writes. “You have a Pyrocene. The contours of such an epoch are already becoming visible through the smoke. If you doubt it, just ask California.”
How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong
Few thought it would arrive so quickly. Now we’re facing consequences once viewed as fringe scenarios. Had a scientist in the early 1990s suggested that within 25 years a single heat wave would measurably raise sea levels, at an estimated two one-hundredths of an inch, bake the Arctic and produce Sahara-like temperatures in Paris and Berlin, the prediction would have been dismissed as alarmist. But many worst-case scenarios from that time are now realities.
Dams Across the U.S. Pose Potential Risk
A more than two-year investigation by the Associated Press has found scores of dams around the United States in various states of disrepair, located in areas where a breach might place thousands in danger. These aging dams loom over homes, businesses, highways, or entire communities which could face life-threatening floods if the dams don’t hold. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimates it would take more than $70 billion to repair and modernize the nation’s more than 90,000 dams. But unlike much other infrastructure, most U.S. dams are privately owned. That makes it difficult for regulators to require improvements from operators who are unable or unwilling to pay the steep costs.