• Landslide detector developed

    A new detector — thought to be the first system of its kind in the world — works by measuring and analyzing the acoustic behavior of soil to establish when a landslide is imminent so preventative action can be taken; noise created by movement under the surface builds to a crescendo as the slope becomes unstable, so gauging the increased rate of generated sound enables accurate prediction of a catastrophic soil collapse

  • 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

  • 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

  • Ocean-landing asteroid will create huge ozone holes

    To date, 818 asteroids that are at least 1-km wide have been discovered on orbits that could take them close to Earth; if a 1-km wide asteroid were to land in the ocean, it would create a big splash, throwing 42 trillion kilograms of water and vapor — enough to fill sixteen million Olympic-sized swimming pools — across an area more than 1,000 kilometers wide and up to hundreds of kilometers above the Earth’s surface; this will result in the destruction of the ozone layer above the Earth’s atmosphere, exposing humans, animals, and plants to civilization-threatening levels of UV radiation

  • Hurricane-proof data center built inside 770,000 gallon water tank

    The city of Altamonte Springs, Florida decided that the best protection against downtimes caused by hurricanes is to build the city’s data center inside a 770,000 gallon water tank; the dome-shaped tank offered 8-inch-thick walls of reinforced concrete and was situated only 100 feet from City Hall

  • 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

  • Giant blimps to ferry hospitals, buildings to disaster zones

    Giant airship will be able to lift up to 150 tons — more than seven times the weight that helicopters are able to carry; the airship, which will be able to move aid — or even portable hospitals and entire buildings — to remote areas or disaster zones, harnesses aerostatic lift, meaning it is able to fly using lighter-than-air (LTA) gases that keep it buoyant rather than aerodynamic lift

  • California prepares for the Big One

    The scientific community in California is growing more and more wary of the potential for a major seismic event since the last that occurred was in 1857; a recent study projected that there was a 99 percent chance that a 6.7 magnitude earthquake would strike somewhere in California during the next thirty years

  • New hazardous asteroid discovered

    A new stellar “potentially hazardous object” (PHO) has been discovered: The object is about 150 feet in diameter and was discovered in images acquired on 16 September; it will come within four million miles of Earth in mid-October

  • Cold water-pumping submarines to reduce ferocity of typhoons

    Typhoon intensity tends to remain level when ocean surface temperatures are high; reduction in the surface-water temperature would reduce the ferocity of the typhoon; Japanese company receives a patent for a typhoon-intensity-reduction system based on submarines pumping cold water from the depth of the sea to the surface in the typhoon’s path

  • New door design to save lives in earthquakes

    New door design would save lives during earthquakes; the door looks unremarkable but, in an emergency, it can swivel horizontally on a central pivot a little less than a meter above the ground; at the same time, the door folds horizontally so the bottom half of it remains on the ground, anchoring it to the floor and providing additional protection

  • Videos of quakes 5.5 available for downloading 1.5 hours after occurrence

    A Princeton University-led research team has developed the capability to produce realistic movies of earthquakes based on complex computer simulations that can be made available worldwide within hours of a disastrous upheaval; movies of every earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or greater will be available for download about 1.5 hours after the occurrence

  • Louisiana worried about Corps' levee armoring plans

    Louisiana says the Corps of Engineers is $1 billion short for completing levee construction around New Orleans, while the Corps says it has enough money; the disagreement over the cost of completing levee construction centers on a long-simmering argument over the last construction task scheduled for earthen levees throughout the system: deciding what type of armoring will keep the levees from washing away if they are overtopped

  • Geoengineering may affect different regions differently

    Geoengineering approaches would succeed in restoring the average global temperature to “normal” levels, but some regions would remain too warm, whereas others would “overshoot” and cool too much; in addition, average rainfall would be reduced