• COASTAL CHALLENGESSinking Land Increases Risk for Thousands of Coastal Residents

    By Travis Williams

    One in 50 people living in two dozen coastal cities in the United States could experience significant flooding by 2050, according to new research. The study projects that in the next three decades as many as 500,000 people could be affected as well as a potential 1 in 35 privately owned properties damaged by flooding.

  • FLOODS & BATTERIESFrom Florida Floods to Idaho Desert: Understanding Impacts of Flood Damage on Vehicle Batteries

    By Michelle Goff

    Electric vehicles offer some clear advantages over gasoline-power cars including zero emissions and lower operation and maintenance costs. But they also present some new challenges. Recent storms have revealed that seawater-flooded EVs can pose safety concerns for passengers, emergency responders and recovery personnel.

  • FLOODSFEMA Is Making an Example of This Florida Boomtown. Locals call it “Revenge Politics.”

    By Jake Bittle

    When U.S. homeowners buy subsidized flood insurance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they make a commitment to build back better after flood disasters, even if it costs them. The Biden administration is trying to punish Lee County for rebuilding flood-prone homes. The state’s Republican politicians are fighting back.

  • CLIMATE MIGRATIONThe Flooding Will Come “No Matter What”

    By Abrahm Lustgarten

    Another great American migration is now underway, this time forced by the warming that is altering how and where people can live. For now, it’s just a trickle. But in the corners of the country’s most vulnerable landscapes —on the shores of its sinking bayous and on the eroding bluffs of its coastal defenses —populations are already in disarray. The complex, contradictory, and heartbreaking process of American climate migration is underway.

  • AI & CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTUREArtificial Intelligence and Critical Infrastructure

    What is the technology availability for AI applications in critical infrastructure in the next ten years? What risks and scenarios (consisting of threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences) is AI likely to present for critical infrastructure applications in the next ten years?

  • EARTHQUAKESHow Prepared Is Taiwan for Earthquakes?

    Taiwan sits on a boundary of tectonic plates, and its long history of catastrophic quakes has forced the island to improve its building construction and design-related technologies. Newly constructed buildings in Taiwan have become “increasingly earthquake-resistant.”

  • EARTHQUAKESBalancing Act: Can Precariously Perched Boulders Signal New York’s Earthquake Risk?

    By Kevin Krajick

    The trouble with big earthquakes is that their subterranean root systems can lurk for centuries or millennia before building enough energy to explode. Among many places, this is true of the New York City area, where scientists believe big quakes are possible—but probably so rare, it is hard to say exactly how often they come, or how big they could be.

  • EARTHQUAKES4.8 Magnitude Earthquake Rattles U.S. North-East

    With its epicenter in in New Jersey, a 4.8 magnitude tremor and was felt across the eastern seaboard, in what scientists say is a relatively rare event for the region. Earthquakes in the eastern United States are felt across broader areas that earthquakes in other parts of the United States because the bedrock is much older and harder, transferring seismic energy more easily.

  • CLIMATE CHANGE & NATIONAL SECURITYHow Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations

    By Doug Irving

    “People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”

  • COASTAL CHALLENGESArtificial Reef Could Protect Marine life, Reduce Storm Damage

    By Jennifer Chu

    MIT engineers designed a sustainable and cost-saving structure which aims to dissipate more than 95 percent of incoming wave energy using a small fraction of the material normally needed.

  • WILDFIRESUsing Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires

    Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.

  • TEXAS WILDFIRESHow Climate Change Primed Texas to Burn

    By Naveena Sadasivam

    Over the past 10 days, five wildfires in the region have burned more than 1.2 million acres. The largest of them — dubbed the Smokehouse Creek Fire, for a creek near its origin — stretches across an area larger than Rhode Island. The state’s high plains get a month more fire weather now than they did in the 1970s.

  • TEXAS WILDFIRESTexas Requires Utilities to Plan for Emergencies. That Didn’t Stop the Panhandle Fires.

    By Emily Foxhall

    Experts say utilities need to be ready for extreme weather, which could be a challenge in a state where discussing climate change is often taboo. A review of portions of the state’s electricity code shows utilities have to plan for maintaining their equipment and responding in emergencies, but how they do so is largely left to the companies.

  • CLIMATE CHANGE & SECURITYClimate Change Poses Serious National Security Threat

    After years of debate, there is growing awareness within the Department of Defense and the U.S. government more broadly that climate change poses a serious national security threat. Some efforts to cope with this challenge are already underway.

  • POWER GRIDHurricanes and Power Grids: Eliminating Large-Scale Outages with a New Approach

    Large scale-power outages caused by tropical cyclones can be prevented almost entirely if a small but critical set of power lines is protected against storm damages.