• WEATHER HAZARDSBuilding a Database on Public Response to Severe Weather Hazards

    The public is being surveyed on perceptions and response to flash floods, tornados, severe thunderstorms and winter weather under a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

  • DISASTERSBringing Disaster Risk, Vulnerability Down to Community Level

    A comprehensive update to NOAA’s Billion Dollar Disasters mapping tool now includes U.S. census tract data – providing many users with local community-level awareness of hazard risk, exposure and vulnerability across more than 100 combinations of weather and climate hazards.

  • RESILIENCEAt-Risk Communities to Invest in Disaster Mitigation Projects

    Bipartisan legislation to make permanent FEMA National Risk Index (NRI), an online tool that utilizes data to identify communities that are most vulnerable to natural disasters, has advanced in the Senate. The bill would require FEMA to use data from the NRI, or a similar tool, o designate the communities across the nation that are most in need of mitigation projects – and help them access federal funding and support to plan for mitigation and resilience projects.

  • DOOMSDAYWith Threats of Nuclear War and Climate Disaster Growing, America’s “Bunker Fantasy” Is Woefully Inadequate

    By David L. Pike

    Faced with a Congress unwilling to fund large-scale sheltering measures — although in Europe and elsewhere, vast public shelters were built, the community bomb shelter was almost universally rejected in the U.S. as communistic — the Kennedy administration decided instead to encourage the private development of the individual shelter industry and to establish dedicated spaces within existing public structures.

  • EMERGENCY RESPONSEThe Evolution of U.S. Emergency Risk Assessment and Response

    The U.S. emergency management system evolved from responses to many past situations, including the Great Depression and the Cold War. The current system formed as a seeming patchwork of federal, local, nonprofit and other agencies. While the current system has advantages and weaknesses, understanding its makeup can help us address current crises, including pandemics and climate change.

  • ResilienceImproving Florida’s Hurricane Resilience: Alternative Fuel Vehicles, Infrastructure

    When events like tropical storms or other unforeseen crises disrupt a state’s primary supply of gasoline and diesel, emergency fleet efforts can become hampered as access to fuel is restricted or completely unavailable.

  • Post-9/11 building codesHow the Terrifying Evacuations from the Twin Towers on 9/11 Helped Make Today's Skyscrapers Safer

    By Erica Kuligowski

    One legacy of the 9/11 tragedy and the harrowing experience of those who successfully escaped the Twin Towers – the disaster was the most significant high-rise evacuation in modern times —  is that today’s skyscrapers can be emptied much more safely and easily in an emergency.

  • Resilience9/11 Prepared Firms for COVID-19 Economic Effects

    Companies which experienced the financial impact of 9/11 were more resilient to the economic effects of COVID-19, according to new research.The research is the first of its kind to compare the events of the last eighteen months with 9/11.

  • Supply chain securitySecuring Domestic Supply Chain of Critical Materials

    DOE announced $30 million in funding for 13 national lab and university-led research projects to develop new technologies that will help secure the supply of critical materials that build clean energy technologies.

  • FloodsFlood control: Seeking Community-Driven Answers to Living with Flooding

    Researchers have used a localized flooding event to envision how human beings can live with the threat of water invading their living and working spaces.

  • ResilienceSmall Towns Should Focus on Resilience

    With heatwaves, bushfires, and floods, small towns and their surrounding communities have confronted a combination of successive disasters fueled by climate change. And it’s predicted to only get worse. “So, the challenge for all of us, but particularly areas at increasing risk of climate-fueled disasters, is to get ahead of what’s coming,” says one expert. “We need to ask: what we can do to reduce or even prevent some of these disasters from happening?”

  • ResilienceHow Have Communities Been Faring During COVID-19? And How Will Lessons Learned Inform Future Response and Planning?

    By Anita Chandra, Linnea Warren May, and Laurie T. Martin

    Now may be a good time to examine the choices communities made during the last year to see how these approaches shape continued COVID-19 response and recovery and help build resilience for future pandemic response.

  • ResilienceNew Thinking to Translate Infrastructure Dollars into Resilience

    By Benjamin Lee Preston, Michelle E. Miro, and Andrew Lauland

    America’s roads, bridges and other public resources and services appear to be suffering from a chronic resilience deficit, and recent cyberattacks appear to reflect gaps in resilience. All these underscore the fact that much of the nation’s infrastructure was built under the assumptions of the past and apparently false expectations about the risks of the future. Rapid changes in infrastructure as well as the threats to which it is exposed are creating new challenges for resilience.

  • EarthquakesBetter Earthquake Recovery

    For the last century, seismic building codes and practices have primarily focused on saving lives by reducing the likelihood of significant damage or structural collapse. Recovery of critical functions provided by buildings and infrastructure have received less attention, however. As a result, many remain vulnerable to being knocked out of service by an earthquake for months, years or for good. A new report outlines seven recommendations that, if acted upon, may greatly improve the resilience of communities across the nation.

  • Oil spillsNew Lessons from the Worst Oil Spill Disaster ever

    By Nancy Bazilchuk

    Ten years ago, the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico killed eleven men and resulted in the largest accidental oil spill in history. Years of investigations concluded that the drilling crew missed critical warning signals that would have stopped the problem. A new analysis suggests that wasn’t the case.