• PG&E to improve pipelines safety

    Following the deadly natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California, on 9 September, PG&E said it would upgrade its California pipeline system to boost safety; a key element will be the installation of hundreds of automatic shutoff valves to replace the current manual valves; the company would also contribute $10 million to a nonprofit group to develop better diagnostic tools to determine the condition of underground pipelines

  • Geologists warn of warming-induced landslides flattening cities

    There are 39 cities around the world with populations greater than 100,000 — and an untold number of smaller towns and villages — which are situated within 100 kilometers of a volcano that has collapsed in the past and which may, therefore, be capable of collapsing in the future; thinning glaciers on volcanoes could destabilize vast chunks of summit cones, triggering mega-landslides capable of flattening cities such as Seattle and devastating local infrastructure

  • NIST data enabling evacuation planning of high-rise buildings

    NIST researchers made video recordings of evacuation drills in stairwells at nine buildings ranging in height from six to sixty-two stories tall; the drills are part of a wide-ranging study to track the movement of people on stairs during high-rise building evacuation; the data sets created will ensure that architects, engineers, emergency planners, and others involved in building design have a strong technical basis for safer, more cost-effective building evacuations

  • NIST identifies five "foundational" Smart Grid standards

    NIST has identified five “foundational” sets of standards for Smart Grid interoperability and cyber security that are ready for consideration by federal and state energy regulators; the standards focus on the information models and protocols important to efficient and reliable grid operations as well as cyber security

  • Chertoff calls for cyber-deterrence doctrine

    More than 100 countries now have cyber-espionage and cyber-attack capabilities; both kinds of attack used the same tools and might be used to mount anything from a garden variety cyber-espionage attack resulting in the corruption of financial data to something that might result in loss of life, such as a possible attack against air-traffic control systems; governments should formulate a doctrine to stave off cyberattacks similar to the cold war-era principle of nuclear deterrence, according to former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff.; “Everyone needs to understand to rules of the game”

  • Goal of eliminating HEU reactors faces hurdles

    To lessen the risk of terrorists getting their hands on bomb-grade materials, the U.S. has led an effort to end the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in research reactors around the world; 72 HEU reactors have been modified or shuttered, but various government and academic facilities still operate around 130 HEU reactors — and these operators are reluctant to switch because of the complexities involved in changing to a new technology

  • With rising sea levels, the time for adapting is now

    Coastal development has accelerated over the past fifty years; many of the world’s megacities are situated at the coast and new infrastructure worth billions of dollars is being constructed; these developments assume that the stable sea levels of the past several millennia will continue — but this assumption is no longer true

  • Satellite images show Hezbollah training in Syria missile base

    Syria’s Assad has been presenting himself to Europe and the United States as a peace-seeker, but he continues to maintain his strategic alliance with Iran and Hezbollah; Google Earth photos show Scuds at base near Damascus, and also show Hezbollah militants being trained in maintaining and firing the missiles

  • Study: U.S. grid robust, hard to bring down

    Reliance on a particular kind of mathematical model — a so-called topological model — for understanding complex systems has led a growing number of researchers to conclude that the U.S. electric grid is exceedingly vulnerable to disruption; two mathematicians now argue that these studies “have ignored the physics of how things actually work — like electricity infrastructure”; an examination of how the grid actually works would show that the U.S. electrical grid is probably more secure that many people realize

  • U.S. power grid easy prey for hackers

    Attackers could manipulate power-grid data by breaking into substations and intercepting communications between substations, grid operators, and electricity suppliers; grid hackers could make millions of dollars at the expense of electricity consumers by influencing electricity markets; they could also make the grid unstable, causing blackouts

  • Large parts of the world are drying up

    The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa, and South America, have been drying up in the past decade as a result of intensified “evapotranspiration” — the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere

  • Experts: Stuxnet "a game changer"

    EU cybersecurity agency warns that the Stuxnet malware is a game changer for critical information infrastructure protection; PLC controllers of SCADA systems infected with the worm might be programmed to establish destructive over/under pressure conditions by running pumps at different frequencies; Dr. Udo Helmbrecht, chief of EU’s cybersecurity agency: “Stuxnet is a new class and dimension of malware—- The fact that perpetrators activated such an attack tool, can be considered as the ‘first strike’ against major industrial resources. This has tremendous effect on how to protect national [cyber and critical infrastructure] in the future’

  • Securing privately owned critical infrastructure networks

    Securing the industrial control systems (ICS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks that are used to run the U.S. critical infrastructure is a daunting job; as in other areas of critical infrastructure protection, ICS and SCADA risk mitigation falls to private owner-operators, as do the costs

  • Regulators: N.J. nuclear plant employee was an Islamic jihadist

    A 26-year old American, Sharif Mobley, now under arrest in Yemen for terrorist activities, became an Islamic militant while working for six years at several nuclear plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland; the man — who told fellow workers “We are brothers in the union, but if a holy war comes, look out” — had unescorted access to the interior of the plants; to have unescorted access to secure areas of a nuclear power plant, a person must undergo a background investigation, including a criminal record check and a psychological assessment — but the rules did not account for temporary workers who migrate from plant to plant, as Mobley did

  • Iran: Stuxnet part of Western sabotage campaign

    Iran claims that the Stuxnet virus which infected more than 30,000 computers used in industrial control systems in the country — many of them in Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, especially to yet-to-become operational Bushehr nuclear power plant — is part of a covert Western plot to derail its nuclear program; this is the most direct admission by Iran that the West — read: the United States and Israel — have been engaged in a systematic covert sabotage campaign to derail Iran’s weapons program