by admin | Sep 23, 2015 | Climate, Drought, Urban Planning, Water
Drought is just different from other kinds of disasters. It has a very slow onset, so slow that affected regions often do not realize they are ensnared in a prolonged drought until months or even years have passed and water supplies are severely depleted. How do we...
by admin | Sep 19, 2015 | Disaster, Public safety, Urban Planning
Paradise is not always paradise. Hawaii generally is vulnerable to a number of potential disasters, including tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, drought, and, in the case of the Big Island, volcanoes (although not of the explosive variety). The entire archipelago is...
by admin | Aug 23, 2015 | Climate, Economic development, Environment, Infrastructure, Resilience, Urban Planning, Water
For a number of years, the American Society of Civil Engineers has been issuing an annual report card on the condition of the nation’s infrastructure. Generally speaking, those grades have not been good: In 2013, the nation’s grade point average was a D+....
by admin | Jul 28, 2015 | Blogging, Climate, Disaster, Disaster policy, Economics, Education, Geography, Resilience, Urban Planning
Interdisciplinary disaster studies are still relatively new, compared to long-standing fields like geology or even psychology. I spent last week (July 19-23) in Broomfield, Colorado, first at the Natural Hazards Workshop, sponsored by the University of Colorado’s...
by admin | Jul 12, 2015 | Chicago, Climate, Education, Environment, Public policy, Public safety, Resilience, Science, Urban Planning, Water
I grew up in suburban Cleveland. After a seven-year hiatus in Iowa and briefly in Nebraska, my wife’s home state, we ended up in Chicago. I am unquestionably a Midwesterner with most of my life lived near the Great Lakes. It will therefore not be surprising that for...
