• Supply Chain Disruptions—the Risks and Consequences

    Supply chain disruptions cause general economic disruption and key commodity shortages, which then in turn can, in fact, drive aggressive national behavior and international instability. And ironically, this reactive aggressive national behavior can happen even if the health of a national economy itself depends upon continued international economic interdependence. Indeed, this very interdependence can create vulnerabilities.

  • Be Prepared: It Is Impossible to Predict an Earthquake

    In earthquake-prone developed countries like Japan and New Zealand, even severe earthquakes cause very few deaths – they are mainly stories of economic loss. Earthquakes without Frontiers (EwF) supported physical and social scientists in eight U.K. universities and institutes working to increase resilience to earthquakes in Asian countries. But throughout much of the Mediterranean—Middle East–Central Asia earthquake belt, earthquakes here will kill tens, or hundreds of thousands of people.

  • Germany: Building Back in Flood-Prone Areas After a Flood

    After deadly flash flooding devastated villages in Germany’s Ahr Valley, many residents are hoping to return. But experts say there needs to be a fundamental change in how we build in areas at risk of floods.

  • CyberForce Competition: Collegiate Students Try to Outwit Cyberattackers

    The cybersecurity field faces a shortfall of qualified professionals to fill nearly half a million open jobs. The CyberForce Competition, to be held on 13 November at the Argonne National Laboratory, will see college and university students from across the United States attempt to thwart a simulated cyberattacks. The competition seeks to inspire and help develop the next generation of energy sector cyber defenders.

  • Experts Call for More Comprehensive Research into Solar Geoengineering

    Two articles published in Science magazine this week argue for more and better social science research into the potential use of solar geoengineering to offset some of the global warming from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

  • Back-to-Back Hurricanes Expected to Increase in the Gulf Coast

    Over the past four decades, the time between tropical storms making landfall in the Gulf Coast has been getting shorter. Florida and Louisiana are most likely to experience “sequential landfall,” where one hurricane moves over land faster than infrastructure damaged in a previous storm can be repaired. The researchers estimate this timescale between hurricanes to be 10 days for those states. Being hit by two storms in quick succession gives communities and infrastructure less time to recover between disasters.

  • Stalling Shifting Sand Dunes, Protecting Infrastructure and Ecosystems

    As deserts continue to expand, sand dunes pose an increasing risk to the built environment: swallowing up roads and houses whole as they engulf the land. In a similar way, dunes on the seabed can block shipping routes and even compromise the safety of underwater cables and pipelines.

  • Important Breakthrough to Help Secure Electrical Grid

    As the electrical grid is modernized, it requires new safeguards to keep it safe from cyberattackers. Researchers have developed a novel security approach to find and stop cyberthreats that penetrate the IT layer, preserving grid stability.

  • Protecting Infrastructure from Hackers

    Two Midwestern universities lead an effort to form a coalition of regional research centers to work together to develop the region’s cyber defense talent with an eye to bolstering the defense of the region’s infrastructure against hackers.

  • Flood Sensors to Support NYC Real-Time Flood Monitoring, Response

    In the face of climate change, which is likely to increase the frequency and severity of floods, NYC needs access to real-time data providing critical information on when and where flooding occurs.

  • Extreme Ice Melting in Greenland Raises Global Flood Risk

    Global warming has caused extreme ice melting events in Greenland to become more frequent and more intense over the past 40 years, raising sea levels and flood risk worldwide. Over the past decade alone, 3.5 trillion tons of ice has melted from the surface of the island and flowed downhill into the ocean.

  • U.S. Offers Reward for Information on Russian DarkSide Cybercrime Group

    The United States has announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of any individual holding a “key leadership” position in DarkSide, a cybercrime group believed to be tied to Russia.The DarkSide syndicate was behind the attack on Colonial Pipeline – the largest publicly disclosed cyberattack against critical infrastructure in the United States.

  • Protecting U.S. Critical Infrastructure from Cyberattacks

    Over the past year, there has been a sharp increase in cyberattacks using malware to target the systems of critical infrastructure such as utility companies, government agencies and organizations that provide services and products that we rely on daily.

  • Hackers-for-Hire Drive Evolution of Threat Landscape

    Cybersecurity threats are on the rise. The new edition of the ENISA Threat Landscape (ETL) highlights the surge in cybercriminality motivated by monetization using ransomware or cryptojacking. Supply-chains attacks also rank highly among prime threats because of the significant potential they have in inducing catastrophic cascading effects.

  • DHS Strategic Framework for Addressing Climate Change

    Two weeks ago, the Biden administration released four reports, by DHS, the intelligence community, the Department of Defense, and the National Security Council, on how climate change-driven developments — among them:  worsening conflict within and between nations; increased dislocation and migration as people flee climate-fueled instability; heightened military tension and uncertainty; infrastructure destruction; worsening public health; food and water shortages; financial hazards, and more – are posing an increasingly more serious challenge to global stability and to U.S. national security.