• New York proposes new sea-level rise projection regulations

    New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced last week that to better prepare New York State coastal communities and business owners for extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy three years ago, DEC is proposing new state sea-level rise projections which will help state agencies and project planners develop more resilient structures. “The sea-level rise projections DEC is proposing today reflect the best science available,” said DEC acting commissioner. “Sea level projections will help state agencies, developers, planners and engineers to reduce risks posed by rising seas and coastal storms over the next several decades.”

  • NSF highlights more than forty years of supporting cybersecurity research and education

    New report highlights NSF-funded cybersecurity research and education. Today, NSF invests nearly $160 million each year in interdisciplinary research, education, and workforce development help protect national and personal security. This support helps scientists develop the tools, training, and people that will keep the nation safe and maintain online privacy.

  • In our Wi-Fi world, the internet still depends on undersea cables

    Not many people realize that undersea cables transport nearly 100 percent of transoceanic data traffic. These lines are laid on the very bottom of the ocean floor. They’re about as thick as a garden hose and carry the world’s Internet, phone calls and even TV transmissions between continents at the speed of light. A single cable can carry tens of terabits of information per second. The cables we all rely on to send everything from e-mail to banking information across the seas remain largely unregulated and undefended. Any single cable line has been and will continue to be susceptible to disruption. And the only way around this is to build a more diverse system, because the thing that protects global information traffic is the fact that there’s some redundancy built into the system. But as things are, even though individual companies each look out for their own network, there is no economic incentive or supervisory body to ensure the global system as a whole is resilient. If there’s a vulnerability to worry about, this is it.

  • California releases plan for preparing the state for extreme effects of climate change

    In response to a directive from California governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., the California Natural Resources Agency has been seeking public comment on a draft plan for how California will prepare for and adapt to the catastrophic effects of climate change, including extended droughts and wildfires, rising sea levels and increasingly extreme weather. The draft plan — Safeguarding California: Implementation Action Plans — identifies the state’s vulnerabilities to climate change and details steps that need to be taken across ten sectors including water, transportation, agriculture, biodiversity and habitat, emergency management, and energy.

  • Bikini islanders petition to relocate to U.S. as rising seas threaten to swallow their island

    About 1,000 Bikini islanders have petitioned to be relocated to the United States as rising seas threaten to swallow their adopted home. Several hundred islanders were moved from their homes on the Bikini Atoll in 1946 when the United States decided to use it for nuclear weapons tests. In 1948 the islanders were settled on a nearby island in the Marshall chain called Kili. In the last decade, however, climate change and sea level rise have made life on Kili dangerous, as the island has been steadily losing the struggling against huge tides and increasingly ferocious storms.

  • Extreme weather events in Chesapeake Bay offer clues for future

    For the millions of people who live in its expansive coastal areas, Chesapeake Bay provides an important source of income and recreational enjoyment. To protect the ecosystem and the livelihood of area residents, it is important to assess how climate variability and change will affect Chesapeake Bay’s shallow water ecosystems and water quality.

  • Analyzing bedrock could help builders, planners identify safe building zones

    Research could give builders and urban planners more detailed information about how susceptible areas are to landslides and earthquakes. The researchers focused on bedrock, just beneath the soil and roots and the Earth’s surface. Bedrock is the layer at the bottom of what geologists refer to as the “critical zone” because its cracks and fractures provide pathways for air and water, which break down rock and form the soil that is an essential ingredient for all living organisms.

  • PNNL to help DHS address critical infrastructure vulnerabilities

    The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been named a supporting laboratory to the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC). NISAC is a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program which addresses the potential vulnerabilities and consequences of disruption of U.S. critical infrastructure. PNNL says it will contribute advanced computer modeling and simulation capabilities to look at the dependencies, interdependencies, vulnerabilities, and complexities of important critical infrastructure sectors such as dams, water, transportation, energy, and information technology.

  • Concrete innovation makes Seattle skyscraper stable

    All coupling beams in the 1.5 million-square-foot Lincoln Square Expansion — which includes luxury condos, a hotel, dining, retail and office space in two 450-foot towers in the heart of Seattle suburb Bellevue, Washington — are made of fiber-reinforced concrete using a unique design. These concrete coupling beams span doorways and windows, helping walls with such openings in them to function as a single structural unit, while bolstering the building as a whole against earthquakes. Traditionally, coupling beams are reinforced with a labyrinth of rebar, adding a great deal of time, cost and complexity to the construction process.

  • Tsunami-prone nations should follow Japan’s new approach to coastal defenses

    Japan’s lead in implementing sea defense improvements to guard against future disasters is an important reference point for other tsunami-prone nations. In the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, Japan has drawn new engineering guidelines which have transformed Japan’s coastal defenses, and has devised new ways to keep its coastlines safe in the future. Other nations in known tsunami risk areas, however, have not yet followed suit.

  • U.K. bolsters flood defenses

    In 1953, more than 300 people died in the United Kingdom alone when heavy storms swept a high spring tide over sea defenses and across coastal towns in north-east England and Scotland. Today floods still make headlines but our ability to limit their effects has come a long way. Flooding costs the United Kingdom £2.2 billion a year in defenses and repairs, and annual spending must keep growing just to maintain present defenses. That is a massive investment, but history — and recent history at that — shows that the risk of flooding should not be underestimated.

  • 2013 attack on Metcalf, California power grid substation committed by “an insider”: DHS

    A senior DHS official last Wednesday revealed that a 2013 sniper attack on a Metcalf, California energy grid substation – which the top U.S. electrical utility regulator has called “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred” — may have been committed by someone on the inside. The attackers fired more than 100 rounds of .30-caliber rifle ammunition into the radiators of seventeen electricity transformers, which caused the radiators to leak thousands of gallons of oil, which made electronics overheat and shut down.

  • Philippines coastal areas go underwater due to sea level rise

    More than 167,000 hectares of Philippines coastland — about 0.6 percent of the country’s total area — are projected to go underwater in, especially in low-lying island communities, according to research by the University of the Philippines. Low-lying countries with an abundance of coastlines are at significant risk from rising sea levels resulting from global warming. According to data by the World Meteorological Organization, the water levels around the Philippines are rising at a rate almost three times the global average due partly to the influence of the trade winds pushing ocean currents. On average, sea levels around the world rise 3.1 centimeters every ten years. Water levels in the Philippines are projected to rise between 7.6 and 10.2 centimeters each decade.

  • Grid Security Conference focuses on information sharing among stakeholders

    More than 300 industry and federal partners are participating in the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) annual grid security conference, or GridSecCon, in Philadelphia, which opened on Wednesday and ends today. The conference is focusing on key cyber and physical security issues and training for enhancing the security and resiliency of the North American bulk power system. Topics of panel discussions include upgrades to NERC’s E-ISAC, cyber and physical security technology options, the transition to Version 5 of NERC’s critical infrastructure protection standards; and expectations for NERC’s third grid security exercise, GridEx III, which takes place 18-19 November.

  • Improve cybersecurity in energy delivery

    Cyber networks support many important functions within energy delivery systems, from sending data between a smart meter and utility to controlling oil or gas flow in a pipeline. However, they are vulnerable to disturbances. According to the ICS-CERT Monitor, a publication of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a third of the 245 reported cyber incidents in industrial control systems that happened in 2014 occurred in the energy sector. The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) initiative awards $28.1million to a consortium of eleven universities and research organizations, with the goal of improving computer/communication networks for energy delivery systems like power grids and pipelines.