• FLOODSFirst-of-Its Kind Dataset Shows Future Flooding Risk at Neighborhood Level

    By Marguerite Huber

    Climate change fueled extreme weather events, like flooding, are happening more frequently. ANL researchers and partners have developed a new methodology for estimating increased flood risk from climate change.

  • DISASTERSLargest Fire Death Toll Belongs to Aftermath of 1923 Japan Earthquake

    Fires that raged in the days following the 1 September 1923 magnitude 7.9 Kantō earthquake killed roughly 90% of the 105,000 people who perished in and around Tokyo, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in history—comparable to the number of people killed in the World War II atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

  • CLIMATE CHALLENGESClimate Risks Place 39 Million U.S. Homes at Risk of Losing Their Insurance

    By Tik Root

    From California to Florida, homeowners have been facing a new climate reality: Insurance companies don’t want to cover their properties. According to a report released today, the problem will only get worse. “Sound pricing is going to make it unaffordable to live in certain places as climate impacts emerge,” says one expert.

  • DAMSDeadly Dam Failures: Cause, Effect, and Prevention

    By Zulfikar Abbany

    No dam is flood-proof. Thousands are at alert level. But dam failure needn’t be deadly the way it was in Libya’s devastating floods. Here’s what you need to know.

  • FLOODSNew Flood Prediction Model Has Potentially Life-Saving Benefits

    A new simulation model that can predict flooding during an ongoing disaster more quickly and accurately than currently possible. The new model has major potential benefits for emergency responses, reducing flood forecasting time from hours and days to just seconds, and enabling flood behavior to be accurately predicted quickly as an emergency unfolds.

  • DISASTER RESPONSECoordinating Australia’s Response to Natural Disasters and National Crises

    By Joe Buffone and Rob Cameron

    Australia’s comprehensive national crisis coordination process — the National Coordination Mechanism, or NCM — works well, and its continued use—and evolution—points the way to even more comprehensively coordinated resilience building, crisis planning, response and recovery. Extrapolation of the NCM will prove critical if national mobilization is required to deal with crises other than natural disasters and pandemics.

  • FLOODS100-Year Floods Could Occur Yearly

    Some floods are so severe they rarely strike more than once a century, but rising seas could threaten coastal communities with yearly extreme floods. Within decades, most coastal communities will encounter 100-year floods annually, even under a moderate scenario in which carbon dioxide emissions peak by 2040. As early as 2050, regions worldwide could experience 100-year floods every nine to fifteen years on average.

  • EARTHQUAKES RESILIENCEMorocco: Building with Earthquake Resilience

    By Sushmitha Ramakrishnan

    Quakes kill relatively few, but the resulting building collapse kills many more. How do we keep people safe in their own homes?

  • GROUND COLLAPSEPreventing Ground Collapse Through New AI-based Monitoring

    As severe urban overcrowding is trending worldwide, many underground development projects are being carried out in metropolitan centers worldwide. Accident prevention has become a major challenge since accidents in underground spaces have occurred due to various causes.

  • COASTAL CHALLENGES‘A Silent Killer’: How Saltwater Intrusion is Overtaking Coastal Farmland in the U.S.

    By Peggy Chen

    As hurricanes get stronger, storm surges are bringing saltwater to farmland—and leaving salt there once waters evaporate. And as sea level increases due to climate change, the difference between ocean water levels and soil elevation is decreasing, making post-storm water runoff more difficult. With enough flooding, the soil on farms could become so salinized that crops can no longer be grown on that land. The salt eventually makes contact with freshwater aquifers, thus salinizing them.

  • DISASTERS2023: Record Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters

    2023 still has three-and-a-half months to go, but it has already broken the record for $1-billion climate-driven disasters, that is, disasters which have caused damage of at least $1 billion. So far this year, the United States has experienced 23 such disasters. The previous record – 22 $1-billion climate disasters – was in 2020. The 1980–2022 annual average is 8.1 $1-billion events; the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2018–2022) is 18.0 $1-billion events.

  • FLOODSHuman Destruction of Floodplains Significantly Increases Flood Risks

    A study of human destruction of natural floodplains highlight the critical role floodplains play in wildlife preservation, water quality, and the reduction of flood risk for people. “The bottom line is that the world is at greater flood risk than what we realized, especially considering what effect human development has had on floodplains,” says an expert.

  • EARTHQUAKES100th Anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake: Is Japan Ready for the Next Big One?

    By Julian Ryall

    Japan is marking 100 years since a devastating earthquake triggered a widespread inferno in Kanto, a region that includes the capital, Tokyo. Most of the tens of thousands of victims perished in the fire. seismologists put the likelihood of another major quake beneath the Kanto region of Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures at 70% in the next 30 years.

  • WILDFIRESWIFIRE Lab Forms New Partnership with DHS

    By Rajan Tavathia and Kimberly Mann Bruch

    For the past 10 years, the WIFIRE team at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego has been focused on meeting the growing needs of hazard monitoring, mitigation and response. Most recently, the team has partnered with DHS to integrate edge computing – a strategy emphasizing data collection and analysis at the site of or geographically near data sources. Joint effort aims to demonstrate workflows utilizing edge computing for wildfire monitoring, response and mitigation.

  • FLOODSThe Causes of the 1931 Yangtze River Deluge

    In the summer of 1931, an unprecedented calamity unfolded along the Yangtze River basin in eastern China—the 1931 Yangtze River flood, known as one of history’s deadliest natural disasters. This cataclysmic event submerged a staggering 180,000 km2, affected 25 million lives, and claimed over 2 million lives. What caused this monumental flood?