The New York Times - by Daniel P. Aldrich - August 28, 2012

HURRICANE Isaac, which made landfall in Louisiana last night, has not only disrupted the Republican National Convention but also brought back painful memories of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast seven years ago this week.

. . . As a political scientist (I taught at Tulane at the time), I decided to study how communities respond to natural disasters. I’ve concluded that the density and strength of social networks are the most important variables — not wealth, education or culture — in determining their resilience in the face of catastrophe.

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Image: A storm surge pounded the seawall Tuesday along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain as Hurricane Isaac came ashore. (Skip Bolen/European Pressphoto Agency)

nytimes.com - John Schwartz, Campbell Robertson, Kim Severson, David Thier - August 29th, 2012

Louisiana officials on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of some 3,000 people in a parish outside New Orleans and are continuing to rescue dozens of others in the same area trapped by rapidly rising floodwaters caused by Hurricane Isaac.

Plaquemines Parish has emerged so far as the area of southeastern Louisiana that has received the most significant damage from the storm, which continues to crawl over the coastal area, carrying with it 75 mile per hour winds and driving rain that has led to calamitous flooding.

sites.duke.edu - Volker Franke, Ph.D.

In an effort to stabilize and reconstruct post-conflict countries and fragile states, the United Nations and the European Union are currently involved in 29 peace operations in communities throughout the world. The Communities impacted by disasters, both man made and natural, or by the growing range of threats to peace, security, and development, require assistance from domestic and international organizations. Donor agencies and academic observers have addressed the importance of partnering with stakeholders in local communities in order to provide aid most effectively for the best possible outcome.

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Allen Williams Sr. found space in a shelter in Belle Chasse, La.  William Widmer for The New York Times

The New York Times - by Campbell Robertson - August 27, 2012

NEW ORLEANS — Huge and slow, Tropical Storm Isaac lumbered up through the Gulf of Mexico from Florida toward Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday, growing stronger by the hour and putting coastal residents on notice of an extremely wet and potentially destructive next few days.

The tracking forecasts reached a consensus by Monday night that the storm, which was a little over 200 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and on the verge of becoming a hurricane, would land overnight Tuesday somewhere around southeastern Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane.

But Isaac has been fickle and confounded predictions all along, and its intensification is just beginning.

Image: One of the reactors at the Millstone nuclear power station had to shut down when temperatures in the Long Island Sound, its source of cooling water, became too warm. (Roger Ressmeyer, Corbis)

news.nationalgeographic.com - August 17th, 2012 - Joe Eaton

Record heat and drought conditions across the United States this summer have plagued power plants that require cool water to produce electricity.

From Connecticut to California, high water temperatures and diminished access to water caused by drought have forced a number of power plants to ramp down production or acquire waivers to operate with cooling water above regulated temperatures. At least one plant has suspended operations.

Image: The mosquito-borne disease has set off aerial spraying of pesticides, but an online petition has drawn 1,700 signatures asking that it be stopped. (Reuters)

nytimes.com - August 16th, 2012 - Manny Fernandez and Donald G. McNeil Jr.

An outbreak of West Nile virus has engulfed Dallas County, with nearly 200 cases of human infection and 10 deaths, leading the mayor of Dallas to declare a state of emergency and to authorize the first aerial spraying of a pesticide in the city since 1966.

The high number of infections and deaths from the mosquito-borne disease marks the nation’s worst outbreak of West Nile in a year that has already logged a record number of cases across the country. The virus has become endemic in the United States since the first outbreak in 1999.

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wirelessdesignmag.com - businessinsider.com
- by Geoffrey Ingersoll - August 13, 2012

Not only does your phone know where you are, but it knows where you are going to be. It may even know why you're going there.

He calls it the "Interdependence and Predictability of Human Mobility and Social Interactions," but the algorithm researcher Mirco Musolesi and his team recently tested in the UK stirs up thoughts reminiscent of Phillip K. Dick's Minority Report, and all the moral trappings that come with it.

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Mirco Musolesi - Interdependence and Predictability of Human Mobility and Social Interactions (6 page .PDF file)
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~musolesm/papers/mdc12.pdf

Advocate staff photo by BILL FEIG -- This is an aerial view of the 422-foot- deep sinkhole that emerged recently near Bayou Corne. The Texas Brine Co. LLC facility well pad for a plugged and abandoned salt cavern is at right; Crosstex Energy LP facility is in upper left, while the pipeline corridor is at far lower left.

fox8live.com - August 3, 2012

NAPOLEONVILLE, La. (AP) - Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Friday in Assumption Parish after officials ordered an immediate evacuation of the Bayou Corne area because a slurry area appeared to be expanding.

"The fear of the unknown prompted the evacuation order," said John Boudreaux, director of the parish's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. "The fear of it possibly compromising either the nearby pipelines or cavern storage areas, that could cause a risk to the community."

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submitted by Tom McGinn

July 26, 2012 - Fish float to the surface in a lake near the West Des Moines Library.  Rodney White / The Register

washingtonpost.com - by Peter Whoriskey - August 11, 2012

In OTTUMWA, IOWA — Driving by a boat ramp one Saturday morning last month, a local man noticed some white spots on the Des Moines River.

The undersides of dead sturgeon formed glistening constellations in the muddy brown water.

In all, about 58,000 dead fish were along a 42-mile stretch, according to state officials, and the cause of death appeared to be heat.

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submitted by John Wysham

fiercehomelandsecurity.com - by David Perera - August 9, 2012

Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative

Some federal polices have created unintended negative consequences for resiliency

A focus on resiliency should replace a disaster response status quo that will prove increasingly costly in lives and expenses, says an Aug. 1 report from the National Academy of Sciences.

The report, sponsored by a swath of federal agencies and researchers, calls for community-driven and top-down resiliency measures, including community resiliency coalitions, a Homeland Security Department-prepared national resilience scorecard and incorporation of national resilience as an organizing principle of the federal government.

The concept of resiliency--which report authors define as "the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events" has assumed heightened importance as a homeland security concept, especially as natural disasters have become more damaging.

chicagotribune.com - Reuters - by Susan Guyette - August 8, 2012

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Swine flu is spreading in Indiana, with human cases rising tenfold in a week, state public health officials said on Wednesday, confirming 113 people are infected and saying they expect to see more.

The total confirmed cases of the Influenza A variant virus that has been transmissible from swine to humans in Indiana jumped from just 11 last week. The cases, which show symptoms of a mild seasonal flu, have been found in 18 counties across the state, state health official said.

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chicagotribune.com - Deborah Zabarenko - August 3rd, 2012

A monster blast of geomagnetic particles from the sun could destroy 300 or more of the 2,100 high-voltage transformers that are the backbone of the U.S. electric grid, according to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Even a few hundred destroyed transformers could disable the entire interconnected system.

There is impetus for a group of federal agencies to look for ways to prepare for such a storm this year as the sun moves into an active period called solar maximum, expected to peak in 2013.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/03/us-solar-superstorm-idUSBRE8721K820120803

image courtesy of Tom Toles

www.washingtonpost.com - published August 3, 2012 - by James E. Hansen (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

 When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.

But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.

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submitted by Samuel Bendett

homelandsecuritynewswire.com - August 7th, 2012

Increasing the U.S. resilience to natural and human-caused disasters will require complementary federal policies and locally driven actions that center on a national vision, says a new report from the National Academies. The report, Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative, says that improving resilience should be seen as a long-term process, but it can be coordinated around measurable short-term goals that will allow communities to better prepare and plan for, withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse events.

“Without innovations to improve resilience, the cost of disasters will continue to rise both in absolute dollar amounts and in losses to social, cultural, and environmental systems in each community,” said Susan L. Cutter, director of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina and chair of the committee that wrote the report.  “Enhancing our resilience to disasters is imperative for the stability, progress, and well-being of the nation.”

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guardian.co.uk - July 30th, 2012 - Suzanne Goldenburg

The Obama administration was urged on Monday to stop diverting grain to gas amid warnings of an "imminent food crisis" caused by America's drought.

US government forecasts of a 4% rise in food prices for US consumers because of the drought have sharpened criticism of supports for producing fuel from corn-based ethanol.

Meanwhile, research published last week by the New England Complex Systems Institute warned of an "imminent food crisis" because of the diversion of corn stocks to ethanol.

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