You are here

Home

Situation Report

'Everyone Would Have Left': Putting Lessons From Hurricane Michael To Work

Sat, 2019-06-08 01:38 — Kathy Gilbeaux

           

A boat moved by Hurricane Michael rests near a canal in May in Mexico Beach, Fla. Seven months after the hurricane made landfall, the town is still littered with heavily damaged or destroyed homes and businesses.  Scott Olson/Getty Images

npr.org - by Greg Allen - June 7, 2019

As another hurricane season begins, emergency managers and other officials throughout the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast are applying lessons they learned last year during Hurricane Michael. Those lessons include how they conduct evacuations . . .

 . . . we're going to start seeing a lot of things change . . . 

 . . . Among those likely changes: how people prepare for storms, how many evacuate and how strong new construction on Florida's Panhandle will need to be to survive hurricanes like Michael.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

Country / Region Tags: 
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Communication
Disaster Response
Emergency Management
Extreme Weather
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Situation Report

Sea Level Rise Up: Realities & Opportunities - Keynote: Tampa Bay’s Blue-Green Economy in Times of Sea Level Rise

Sat, 2019-05-04 23:43 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Dr. Michael D. McDonald, Coordinator, Global Health Response and Resilience Alliance - St. Petersburg College - Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

Though the Tampa Bay area is ranked as the nation’s second-highest at-risk metropolitan area from climate change effects, it can thrive during the decades of rapid changes ahead by becoming a leader of the rapidly emerging Blue-Green economy. Tampa Bay has a set of extraordinary opportunities in the management of health, human security, and prosperity not only for its 3.5 million residents, but also as a model for how urban areas can face the challenges of sea level rise and broader climate change. The speaker will discuss how the region’s already well-established record for sound policy, adaptive markets, climate-smart infrastructure, compassion and social equity represents a foundation for transformation into a formidable force for resilience. He will explain how the diversion of trillions of dollars from petroleum-dependent industries into transformative climate resilience initiatives represents a new world of opportunities to forge a bright climate-resilient future for the region.

Country / Region Tags: 
US - SouthEast
General Topic Tags: 
Adaptation
Climate
Resilience
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Solutions
Problem
Situation Report

National Storm Surge Hazard Maps

Tue, 2019-04-30 08:31 — Kathy Gilbeaux

https://noaa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=d9ed7904dbec441a9c4dd7b277935fad&entry=1

This national depiction of storm surge flooding vulnerability helps people living in hurricane-prone coastal areas along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), Hawaii, and Hispaniola to evaluate their risk to the storm surge hazard. These maps make it clear that storm surge is not just a beachfront problem, with the risk of storm surge extending many miles inland from the immediate coastline in some areas. If you discover via these maps that you live in an area vulnerable to storm surge, find out today if you live in a hurricane storm surge evacuation zone as prescribed by your local emergency management agency. If you do live in such an evacuation zone, decide today where you will go and how you will get there, if and when you're instructed by your emergency manager to evacuate. If you don't live in one of those evacuation zones, then perhaps you can identify someone you care about who does live in an evacuation zone, and you could plan in advance to be their inland evacuation destination – if you live in a structure that is safe from the wind and outside of flood-prone areas.

National Hurricane Center - National Storm Surge Hazard Maps - Version 2
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/nationalsurge/

Country / Region Tags: 
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Climate
Extreme Weather
Land Use
Map
Sea Level
Visualization
Vulnerability
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Situation Report

Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate (2018)

Mon, 2019-04-29 10:01 — Kathy Gilbeaux


CLICK HERE - STUDY - Union of Concerned Scientists - Underwater - Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate (28 page .PDF document)

ucsusa.org - June 2018

Sea levels are rising. Tides are inching higher. High-tide floods are becoming more frequent and reaching farther inland. And hundreds of US coastal communities will soon face chronic, disruptive flooding that directly affects people's homes, lives, and properties.

Yet property values in most coastal real estate markets do not currently reflect this risk. And most homeowners, communities, and investors are not aware of the financial losses they may soon face.

This analysis looks at what's at risk for US coastal real estate from sea level rise—and the challenges and choices we face now and in the decades to come.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Climate
Economics
Sea Level
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Problem
Situation Report

How Climate Change Is Fuelling the U.S. Border Crisis

Wed, 2019-04-10 10:08 — Kathy Gilbeaux

           

Outside the small village of Chicua, in the western highlands, in an area affected by extreme-weather events, Ilda Gonzales looks after her daughter.

newyorker.com - by Jonathan Blitzer - Photography by Mauricio Lima - April 3, 2019

. . . In most of the western highlands, the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when. “Extreme poverty may be the primary reason people leave,” Edwin Castellanos, a climate scientist at the Universidad del Valle, told me. “But climate change is intensifying all the existing factors” . . . Farming, Castellanos has said, is “a trial-and-error exercise for the modification of the conditions of sowing and harvesting times in the face of a variable environment.” Climate change is outpacing the ability of growers to adapt.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

Country / Region Tags: 
Global
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Agriculture
Climate
Drought
Extreme Weather
Food
Land Use
Security
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Situation Report

Serious Game Community Priority Gaps & Solutions

Sat, 2019-02-16 05:52 — Kathy Gilbeaux

                                                                               

The first Climate-resilient South Florida Serious Game exercise was held on June 30, 2018 to elevate the voices of the most vulnerable communities in South Florida. The exercise brought together all of the FL DRI communities to experience a simulated set of disasters to reveal the current baseline state of decision-making and simulated actions taken by community members to address collective vulnerabilities using current assets available to them within their communities. Clear lists of mission-critical gaps were developed from each community discussion table at the Serious Game.

A total of 130 community members participated in this event. Community members in groups of 10 in round table discussion format. Each table represented a community or region of Miami-Dade or Broward counties. Communities like Little Haiti had close to 20 members present. In this case, they were split in two groups, Little Haiti #1 and Little Haiti #2. Communities with few members were grouped with neighboring communities. The tables below are the findings from each community discussion table.

Country / Region Tags: 
US - SouthEast
General Topic Tags: 
Climate
Community
Resilience
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Solutions
Problem
Situation Report

Atlantic Hurricanes Are Strengthening Faster, Partially Because of Climate Change, Study Finds

Fri, 2019-02-08 23:15 — Kathy Gilbeaux

           

A neighbor takes photographs of a boat smashed against a car garage, deposited there by the high winds and storm surge from Hurricane Florence, along the Neuse River, Sept. 15, 2018 in New Bern, North Carolina. - (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates

weather.com - by Sean Breslin - February 8, 2019

Hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin are exploding into monster storms at a rapid pace more and more often, and climate change is one reason why, a new study has found.

Published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, the findings compiled by a team of hurricane experts – several of whom work for NOAA – concluded that rapid intensification is happening more often than it should.

The result can be a hurricane that grows from a relatively tame Category 1 to a massive Category 4 or 5 storm, the most recent example being Hurricane Michael, which ravaged the Florida Panhandle last October (the Gulf of Mexico is included as part of the Atlantic Basin).

Country / Region Tags: 
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Climate
Extreme Weather
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Problem
Situation Report

Most U.S. Companies Say They are Planning to Transition to a Circular Economy

Wed, 2019-02-06 07:54 — Kathy Gilbeaux

But the definition of circular economy remains unhelpfully broad.

fastcompany.com - by Adele Peters - February 5, 2019

When Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport remodeled a terminal, it didn’t buy light bulbs; instead, the company signed a contract for “light as a service” from Signify, the company formerly known as Philips Lighting. Signify owns the physical lights, giving it the incentive to make products that last as long as possible and that can be easily repaired and recycled if anything breaks.

The service is one example of a shift to a circular economy model. Rather than just mining materials and manufacturing products that ultimately end up in landfills, companies are increasingly trying to figure out how to use resources in closed loops.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

Country / Region Tags: 
Global
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Economics
Environment
Recycle
Waste
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Situation Report

Will Solar Panels Survive a Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)?

Sat, 2019-01-26 08:28 — Kathy Gilbeaux

           

CLICK HERE - Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack - Volume 1: Executive Report - 2004 (62 page .PDF report)

solarpowerrocks.com - by Ben Zientara - October 2017

. . . The thing to be worried about here is what’s known as a nuclear electromagnetic pulse, or EMP for short. If a nuclear weapon of sufficient size is detonated, an EMP can disrupt everything that uses electronic circuitry, potentially causing irreversible damage to electronics in cars, airplanes, the U.S. electric grid, and yes, your home solar system . . .

. . . the U.S. Government has commissioned a few studies of the effects and likely aftereffects of an EMP-as-weapon deployed against the country . . .

. . . Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) . . . it’s a lot like the E3 component of a nuclear EMP, and can shut down the grid in much the same way.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
Global
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Energy
Grid
Solar
Vulnerability
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Situation Report

Corporate America Is Getting Ready to Monetize Climate Change

Fri, 2019-01-25 10:17 — Kathy Gilbeaux

           

A highway stands immersed in floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey in West Columbia, Texas, on Aug. 30.  Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

CLICK HERE - CDP - Company Scores

bloomberg.com - by Christopher Flavelle - January 22, 2019

Bank of America Corp. worries flooded homeowners will default on their mortgages. The Walt Disney Co. is concerned its theme parks will get too hot for vacationers, while AT&T Inc. fears hurricanes and wildfires may knock out its cell towers.

The Coca-Cola Co. wonders if there will still be enough water to make Coke.

As the Trump administration rolls back rules meant to curb global warming, new disclosures show that the country’s largest companies are already bracing for its effects. The documents reveal how widely climate change is expected to cascade through the economy -- disrupting supply chains, disabling operations and driving away customers, but also offering new ways to make money.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
Global
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Climate
Economics
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Situation Report

Pages

Subscribe to Situation Report
howdy folks
Page loaded in 4.118 seconds.