• With Automated Treatment, Affordable Water from Nontraditional Sources Can Flow to Underserved Communities

    Researchers are developing advanced automation techniques for desalination and water treatment plants, enabling them to save while providing affordable drinking water to small, parched communities without high-quality water supplies.

  • Walking the Artificial Intelligence and National Security Tightrope

    By Jack Goldsmith

    Artificial intelligence (AI) presents nations’ security as many challenges as it does opportunities. While it could create mass-produced malware, lethal autonomous weapons systems, or engineered pathogens, AI solutions could also prove the counter to these threats. Regulating AI to maximize national security capabilities and minimize the risks presented to them will require focus, caution and intent.

  • Deadly 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.

  • New 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.

  • Sovereignty in Space

    The EU wants to establish its own satellite network by 2027, with the aim of increasing the resilience of the European communications infrastructure and gaining technological sovereignty in space. Achieving this will require novel solutions.

  • How Do We Dismantle Offshore Oil Structures Without Making the Public Pay?

    By Martin Lockman and Martin Dietrich Brauch

    More than 12,000 offshore oil and gas installations straddle the globe, and industry analysts anticipate annual offshore oil and gas investments to reach $173 billion by 2024. A number of oil companies are expected to significantly expand their offshore drilling activities in the coming years. At the same time, many jurisdictions face a growing need to dismantle offshore infrastructure, whether because it is aging, the resources are depleted, or mandated net-zero strategies require some installations to be decommissioned earlier than expected.

  • 100-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.

  • Morocco: 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?

  • ‘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.

  • Human 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.

  • Railroads May Use Their Monopoly Power to Buffer Coal Plants from a Carbon Emissions Tax

    Railroads are likely to cut transportation prices to prop up coal-fired plants if U.S. climate policies further disadvantage coal in favor of less carbon-intensive energy sources. A new study argues that “If policymakers ignore real distortions in the market, like monopoly power in rail shipping, their climate policy efforts may not achieve the intended results.”

  • 100th 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.

  • WIFIRE 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.

  • The 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?

  • Significant Design Advances Across Floating Offshore Wind Sector

    By Alan Williams

    The UK’s renewable energy sector is well placed to take advantage of the expected boom in floating offshore wind technology. Studies highlight the huge advances in platform technology which have taken place over the past two decades.