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Displaying 15 of about 278 resultsMany states haven’t been able to keep their wildfire risk maps up to date, even as global warming increases the danger, because of funding constraintsFor years, Colorado’s wildfire risk map was so inaccurate that state officials all but ignored it.It was long outdated, especially in the state’s western half. There, but unmarked on the map, was more than…
National weather analysts released their 2023 billion-dollar disasters list on Jan. 9, just as 2024 was getting off to a ferocious start. A blizzard was sweeping across across the Plains and Midwest, and the South and East faced flood risks from extreme downpours.The U.S. set an unwelcome record for weather and climate disasters in 2023, with 28 di…
Twenty years ago, Libby, Montana, became known as ‘the town left to die’ after a series of articles appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer exposing asbestos-related deaths linked to one of the largest vermiculite mines in the world. The main product, Zonolite insulation, remains in millions of homes in North America. At that time, Libby was a m…
Removing waste from water bodies helps to tackle various issues, including flood risks. As a member of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, Plan International worked with two communities in El Salvador to build and install a new waste collection method, known as Riobardas, in a river that contributes to the flood risks these communities face. …
The First Street Foundation published new research in the journal Nature-Communications, which integrates observed historic trends of population change, along with flood risk information, to uncover climate migration trends that are occurring in many high flood risk areas across the country. The research highlights the emergence of “Climate Abandonment…
This study examines whether disasters can impact general political trust and if disaster relief efforts can mitigate effects related to political trust. Political trust is foundational to democratic legitimacy, representative governance, and the provision of effective public policy. Various shocks can influence this trust, steering countries onto positi…
Experts reflect on building collapses in the wake of the 2023 Türkiye earthquakes and the importance of earthquake-resilient design in both the U.S. and Türkiye.On Feb. 6, 2023, two major earthquakes — with magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5 — occurred nine hours apart in the southern region of Türkiye. As of March of the same year, an estimated 3 million people…
A series of atmospheric rivers is bringing the threat of heavy downpours, flooding, mudslides and avalanches to the Pacific Northwest and California this week. While these storms are dreaded for the damage they can cause, they are also essential to the region’s water supply, particularly in California, as Qian Cao, a hydrologist at the University of Cal…
As Victoria, British Columbia, commits to removing obstacles to green roof installations and Somerville, Massachusetts mandates their inclusion in new buildings, a Seoul case study underscores the positive social and environmental outcomes of such policy changes.In January, Victoria councillors unanimously voted to explore ways to help residents install…
América Bendito has spent the past three years working with UNESCO on the Built Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean (BERLAC) project (2020–2023). This project sought to develop risk-informed policies and engineering techniques in six countries: Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico and Peru. These countries were selected fo…
Rising seas, heavy precipitation, and extreme heat are causing corrosion, buckling, and cracking.The U.S. has more than 600,000 bridges, and they’re not made to last forever.Mahmoud: “They’re designed for a specific amount of time, usually 75 years. That’s a typical design service life for bridges.”Hussam Mahmoud is a professor in the Department of Civi…
Using a new method to study wildfire-related particulate matter and air quality, researchers propose a way to study the long-term health effects of what are often considered short-term hazards. Researchers using a novel method of measuring long-term wildfire smoke exposure have found that Indigenous communities in California are exposed to dispropo…
Thousands of historic and archaeological sites in Georgia are at risk from tropical storm surges, and that number will increase with climate change, according to a study published February 28, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Matthew D. Howland and Victor D. Thompson of Wichita State University and the University of Georgia.Anthropogenic clim…
Devastating wildfires have caused dozens of casualties in Chile , prompting a state of emergency and a massive rescue operation. The disaster occurred as Chile and other parts of South America are gripped by intense heatwaves fueled by El Niño and exacerbated by climate change.The Chilean government declared a state of emergency and a period of national…
For more than 50 years, the National Hurricane Center has used the Saffir-Simpson Windscale to communicate the risk of property damage; it labels a hurricane on a scale from Category 1 (wind speeds between 74 – 95 mph) to Category 5 (wind speeds of 158 mph or greater).But as increasing ocean temperatures contribute to ever more intense and destructive h…