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Enhancing Earthquake Resilience by Updating Steel Building Standard
Since the mid-1990s, a type of steel column that commonly features slender cross-sectional elements has become more prevalent in buildings along the West Coast of the United States and in other seismically active regions. Although these columns have complied with modern design standards, expert say that our understanding of how they would perform during an earthquake has been limited by a lack of full-scale testing.
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Cities Boosted Rain, Sent Storms to the Suburbs During Europe’s Deadly Summer Floods
When it comes to extreme weather, climate change usually gets all the attention. But according to a new study, the unique effects of cities – which can intensify storms and influence where rain falls – need to be accounted for as well.
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Examining Life-Cycle Bridge Performance and Cost Management
A new book is an authoritative resource for “students, researchers, practitioners, infrastructure owners and managers, and transportation officials to build up their knowledge of life-cycle bridge performance and cost management at both project level and network level under various deteriorating mechanisms, hazards, and climate change effects.”
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Antarctica’s “Doomsday” Glacier: How Its Collapse Could Trigger Global Floods and Swallow Islands
Driven by global warming, sea level has risen around 20cm since 1900, an amount which is already forcing coastal communities out of their homes and exacerbating environmental problems such as flooding, saltwater contamination and habitat loss. The massive Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is similar in size to Great Britain, and it contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by 65cm if it were to completely collapse. The worry is that Thwaites might not be the only glacier to go.
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What Are the Geopolitical Risks of Manipulating the Climate?
It would only take one country—watching its crops shrivel or its water run dry—deciding to take a chance to set in motion a global geoengineering climate experiment, and technologies which could, for example, block the sun’s rays or siphon huge amounts of carbon from the air are not that far out of reach. The effects could get out of hand quickly. Yet the international community has not established the kinds of guardrails you might expect for potentially world-changing technologies. As a result, no single governing body is overseeing geoengineering efforts on a global scale.
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The Use of Earthquake Science for Assessing Risks to Gas Pipelines
New study highlights the need to continue efforts to systematically quantify nationwide earthquake risk to gas pipelines in the United States, which manages the largest gas pipeline network in the world.
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Improving Estimates of Population Exposed to Sea Level Rise: Not as Straightforward as It May Seem
An analysis of data from 2015 finds that between 750 million and more than a billion people globally resided in the ≤ 10 meters low elevation coastal zone (LECZ), up from 521 million and 745 million in 1990. Understanding the number and location of people living LECZ is necessary for policy makers and communities preparing for and adapting to impacts from sea level rise caused by climate change.
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Storm Drains Keep Swallowing People During Floods
An alarming number of people (especially children) have drowned after disappearing into storm drains during floods. The deadly problem should be easy for federal, state and local government agencies to fix, but tragedy strikes again and again.
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What's the Deal with the Log4Shell Security Nightmare?
What started out as a Minecraft prank, has now resulted in a 5-alarm security panic as administrators and developers around the world desperately try to fix and patch systems before the cryptocurrency miners, ransomware attackers and nation-state adversaries rush to exploit thousands of software packages. Nicholas Weaver writes that “Not only does the vulnerability affect thousands of programs but the exploitation of this vulnerability is very straightforward. Attackers are already starting to launch widespread attacks. Further compounding the problem is the huge diversity of vulnerable systems, so those responsible for defending systems are going to have a very bad Christmas.”
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Texas Energy Regulators, Gas Industry Try to Reassure the Public That the State’s Power Grid Is Ready for Winter
As state regulators and the companies that power the grid take steps to avoid another catastrophe like February’s winter storm, climate experts say this winter will likely be milder.
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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.
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Ground Improvement Technique Ahead of Earthquakes
Helping engineers better understand and predict the “liquefaction” hazard during earthquakes and more reliably mitigate it.
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Can Europe Compete with China's Belt and Road Initiative?
The European Union this week launched a $340 billion “Global Gateway” fund to boost global infrastructure, which analysts say is aimed at rivaling China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But can the EU’s project compete with Beijing’s billions?
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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.
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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.
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