• Community-Based Solutions to Enhance Disaster Resilience

    The NSF announced a $15.9 million in awards to teams to conduct and evaluate ready-to-implement pilot projects that address community-identified challenges. A significant portion of the funds was awarded to projects focusing on resilience to natural disasters in the context of equipping communities for greater preparedness to and response after disasters such as floods, hurricanes and wildfires.

  • Feasibility, Cost, and Potential Impacts of Ocean-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal Approaches

    To better understand the potential risks and benefits of removing or sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide using ocean-based interventions — for example, by cultivating seaweed on a large scale or manipulating nutrients in seawater — the U.S. should undertake a new research program to learn more about how these methods could be used to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

  • California’s Water Supplies Are in Trouble as Climate Change Worsens Natural Dry Spells, Especially in the Sierra Nevada

    California is preparing for a third straight year of drought, and officials are tightening limits on water use to levels never seen so early in the water year. Especially worrying is the outlook for the Sierra Nevada, the long mountain chain that runs through the eastern part of the state. California’s cities and its farms – which grow over a third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruit and nuts – rely on runoff from the mountains’ snowpack for water.

  • Cooking Material-Storage Containers to Assess Fire Safety

    Researchers have completed a series of tests on specially designed stainless-steel containers used by the Department of Energy for storage and transportation of hazardous materials. Even at 2000 degrees, the sealed, stainless-steel containers did not split open.

  • Ground Improvement Technique Ahead of Earthquakes

    Helping engineers better understand and predict the “liquefaction” hazard during earthquakes and more reliably mitigate it.

  • Balance of Power—Building a Resilient Electric Grid

    Events such as blackouts and outages are increasing in frequency as the nation’s infrastructure ages and climate change leads to extreme weather events. Hotter, wetter summers and harsher winters require more reliance on heating and cooling utilities, placing higher stress on the nation’s electric grid. Newtechnology can ‘help keep the lights on’ during emergencies.

  • Microgrids May Hold the Key to Grid Resilience

    The aging energy grid is being pushed to the breaking point. Power outages from extreme weather alone cost anywhere from $2 billion to $77 billion per year. And some isolated communities still rely on diesel generators for electricity, since powerlines don’t reach them. Grid expansion isn’t an option—in most cases, the economics don’t make sense. When the main grid falls short, the right mix of renewables offers local, low-carbon power.

  • Getting the Asteroid Before It Gets Us

    Last week, the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters became a reality when NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a small spacecraft that will smash into an asteroid sometime in September or October to try to alter its path.

  • New Generation of Grid Emergency Control Technology

    Grid operators face big challenges and big opportunities when it comes to managing through emergency conditions that disrupt power service. The increasing number of power outages in the United States cost an estimated $30-50 billion and affect millions of customers each year. A real-time adaptive system can safeguard the grid against costly disruptions.

  • Simple and Efficient Method of Quantum Encryption

    Quantum computers will revolutionize our computing lives. But these computers will be able to crack most of the encryption codes currently used to protect our data, leaving our bank and security information vulnerable to attacks

  • Boosting Resilience of U.S. Timekeeping

    The U.S. should bolster research and development of systems that distribute accurate time via fiber-optic cable and radio as part of the effort to back up GPS and enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure that depends on it.

  • Eight Worst Wildfire Weather Years on Record Happened in the Last Decade

    The world’s eight most extreme wildfire weather years have occurred in the last decade. Lower humidity and higher temperatures are driving extreme weather that makes wildfires more frequent and intense.

  • Stacked Deep Learning: Deeper Defense against Cyberattacks

    Internet-based industrial control systems are widely used to monitor and operate factories and critical infrastructure. Moving these systems online has made them cheaper and easier to access, but it has also made them more vulnerable to attack. Stacked deep learning offers a better way to detect hacking into industrial control systems. 

  • Machine Learning Helps Measure Building Earthquake Damage

    One obstacle which often prevent an effective response to earthquakes is that the buildings from which such a response is managed and response equipment stored, are themselves damaged. Researchers have developed a method to quickly assess damage to such buildings immediately after an earthquake to determine whether the buildings can be continued to be used.  

  • Big Batteries on Wheels: Zero-Emissions Rail While Securing the Grid

    Trains have been on the sidelines of electrification efforts for a long time in the U.S. because they account for only 2 percent of transportation sector emissions, but diesel freight trains emit 35 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually and produce air pollution that leads to $6.5 billion in health costs, resulting in an estimated 1,000 premature deaths each year. Researchers show how battery-electric trains can deliver environmental benefits, cost-savings, and resilience to the U.S.