Notre Dame researchers are racing against time to create a new framework for community recovery from natural disasters, educate homeowners on risks and encourage incentives for climate-resilient homes before the next extreme event hits.
The COVID-19 pandemic, bigger and more frequent wildfires, devastating floods, and powerful storms have become unfortunate facts of life. With each disaster, people depend on the emergency response of governments, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector for aid when their lives are upended. However, a complicating factor in delivering that aid is that people tend to disperse with such disasters.
California’s McKinney Fire grew to become the state’s largest fire so far this year. The risk of wildfire is rising globally due to climate change. Below are some of the latest articles that have been added to the Wildfires channel on Newswise.
While many U.S. policy makers are calling for reshoring and nearshoring to combat trade disruptions caused by COVID-19, new University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy research suggests retrenchment of global supply chains is unlikely to happen in the post-pandemic context.
A new national study shows which Americans are least likely to be prepared to take necessary actions when faced with disasters such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires.
Homeowners across the United States are not only experiencing higher mortgage rates and property costs, they’re also at risk of damage from an increasing number of disasters linked to natural hazards, including wildfires.
University of Miami associate professor Kenneth Feeley conducted a lengthy study on forests in Jamaica and learned that hurricanes can magnify the effects of climate change, allowing species from warmer climates to replace those that prefer cooler temperatures.
University of Miami engineering and ocean sciences faculty members received federal research funding recently to delve into how they can strengthen coastal buildings and seawalls in the face of climate change.
How well did our political institutions manage the COVID-19 pandemic and are they prepared to handle future threats to the public? A research team led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York hopes to answer these questions and more after compiling an extensive dataset tracking public health government responses to COVID-19 at all levels of government throughout the world.
Repeated exposure to hurricanes, whether direct, indirect or media-based, is linked to adverse psychological symptoms and may be associated with increased mental health problems, according to a first-of-its kind study led by University of California, Irvine researchers.
Flood frequency analysis is a technique used to estimate flood risk, providing statistics such as the “100-year flood” or “500-year flood” that are critical to infrastructure design, dam safety analysis, and flood mapping in flood-prone areas.
One suggested way to save humankind in the event of a deadly pandemic or other extreme global catastrophe is establishing a safe refuge – on an island or in such far-out places as the moon or under water -- where a portion of the human population can stay alive.
The 2004 Sumatra earthquake generated one of the most destructive tsunamis ever recorded, with 100-foot waves that killed nearly 230,000 and resulted in an estimated $10 billion in damage.
With the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season forecast to be above average activity with a higher probability of major hurricanes making landfall along the continental U.S. coastline, several FAU faculty experts are available to discuss various issues surrounding hurricane preparedness, evacuation and aftermath.
Researchers with the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering’s Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response (RIDER) Center are investigating better ways to predict where road-clogging debris will be most severe after tropical cyclones.
By: Bill Wellock | Published: May 2, 2022 | 4:03 pm | SHARE: Florida State University faculty are leaders in the study of hurricanes and the effects of these destructive storms.Their scholarship has led to research on infrastructure challenges, evacuation routes, sustainable tools and mental health challenges for those affected by hurricanes.
Construction workers, clean-up staff and other untrained nontraditional emergency employees who assisted in recovery efforts at the World Trade Center in New York following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, are more than five times as likely than traditional first responders to have considered suicide, according to a Rutgers study. Published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, the study is believed to be the first to examine the prevalence and connection of thoughts of suicide in two occupational groups that participated in rescue, recovery and clean-up efforts following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Researchers have developed a way to use satellite imaging data to create 3D images that could quickly detect changes on the Earth’s surface, a new study says.
When you live in the driest State in the driest country in the world, bushfires are an unfortunate, and all-too-regular part of life. Learning how to survive such emergencies is important for all people, but especially for our youngest citizens
he COVID-19 pandemic has spiked the overdose death rate from opioid use. For people who rely on medications (buprenorphine, methadone, and extended-release naltrexone) to treat opioid use disorders, the pandemic and such natural disasters as tornados, hurricanes, and wildfires can disrupt access to medications.
University of Florida research has quantified the financial shock that a 2018 red tide bloom had to Florida’s economy using the Airbnb market as a gauge to the broader impacts.
Research on war, conflict, and authoritarianism published in the APS journals Perspectives on Psychological Science, Current Directions in Psychological Science, and Psychological Science between 2008 and 2020.
A team of Harrisburg University professors and students have set out to develop a smart disaster prediction and prevention system that could help save thousands of lives across the U.S. each year.
Using sets of existing disaster data and an adaptive artificial intelligence model, the team plans to design an alert system capable of predicting natural and human-induced disasters, starting with wildfires and vehicle collisions.
While the aftermath of an undersea volcanic eruption and the following tsunami garner much attention as the waves crash around inhabited islands, an expert at West Virginia University says the combination of those hard to predict eruptions and climate change will eventually erase island nations and their cultures in the Pacific and western Indian oceans.
University of Miami experts provide insights on the powerful eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano, an event geologists are calling the biggest recorded anywhere in the world in more than three decades.
A virtual reality exercise undertaken in Australia with people living in high fire-risk zones has revealed some harsh truths: most people are not prepared for a serious bushfire and many would make fatal errors that could cost them their life.
Flooding is the most expensive natural disaster in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), costing the country more than $1 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1980. Rising sea level and more intense storms could be devastating for the more than 40 percent of Americans who live in coastal areas.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists participating in the AGU Fall Meeting 2021, talking about making climate models smarter, are available for media interviews.
The shutdown of the Colonial gas pipeline in May 2021 had a disastrous impact on many sectors of the U.S. economy, particularly those dependent on the country’s transportation infrastructure. The incident was a warning that the failure of one critical infrastructure has a ripple effect on others, leading to sometimes serious human and economic consequences.
Through the project, researchers will help emergency managers develop a Message Design Dashboard (MDD) for FEMA to help write effective messages for public alert and warning.
After nearly two years of pandemic response, Iowa State University emergency manager Clayton Oliver is bringing his knowledge of and experience in disaster response to ISU students in an honors seminar. The students applied what they have learned in a simulated tornado disaster at a university apartment.
Debra Laefer of NYU Tandon and Rae Zimmerman of NYU Wagner have received a $1 million Civic Innovation Challenge (CIC) Award supporting community-based solutions to mobility and disaster resilience by creating a digitized, open, underground infrastructure road map.
Studying major hurricanes Notre Dame researcher, Sisi Meng, found that the fate of hurricane victims depends on a number of factors including how well-prepared they are, whether they have weathered a hurricane before and how quickly their utility services are restored.
On 14 July 2021, between 60 and 180 mm of rain fell in the Eifel region in just 22 hours - an amount that would otherwise have fallen in several months and which led to catastrophic flooding.
Scientists at Argonne are addressing the vulnerabilities of infrastructure systems through the lens of climate impacts: They are creating detailed climate maps and adapting them to infrastructure as a way for communities to protect themselves from the effects of climate change.
In the face of a potentially disastrous storm like Hurricane Ida, people take to Twitter and other social media sites to communicate vital information. New research published in the journal Risk Analysis suggests that monitoring and analyzing this social media “chatter” during a natural disaster could help decision makers learn how to plan for and mitigate the impacts of severe weather events in their communities.
New research suggests that emergency management officials often do not have the numeracy skills needed to make the best decisions based on data they receive about which residents to evacuate during a hurricane and when to make the decision.
UT's Oden Institute will lead an interdisciplinary research project to develop a computational “digital twin” framework for storm surge modeling in the Gulf Coast that bridges the gap between multi-physics simulations and knowledge discovery through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies.
In the months that follow, after the recovery crews have packed up and gone home, hopelessness and isolation set in for many disaster victims. These are the times when mental health support is needed most, according to a WVU researcher.