No targeting funding for communities, but the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction may help with coordination. For more info, see the United Nations Making Cities Resilient: My City is Getting Ready website.
Author Archive | Wesley Shaw
Best Practices for Effective Hurricane Communication
Posted on December 6, 2010
Louisiana State University has released a great brochure on best practices for communicating about hurricane risks. It’s short, simple, and it makes sense. Here’s the meat of it, broken down by audience: GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS Be Proactive in Educating the Public: Gaining compliance during a hurricane requires year-round efforts. Waiting until the storms hit invites disaster. […]
New Guidance for Post-Disaster Redevelopment Planning
Posted on October 21, 2010
The Florida Department of Community Affairs and Florida Division of Emergency Management yesterday released its long-awaited Post-Disaster Redevelopment Planning: A Guide for Florida Communities. [QUICK NOTE: while this is written for Florida, it’s likely to be useful for communities anywhere in the US.] From their announcement: Over the past four years the Department and the […]
Quick and Easy Way to Create Storm Surge Maps
Posted on October 11, 2010
They’re not precise enough to use for planning purposes, but the National Hurricane Center has created a neat tool to show projections for where hurricanes are likely to drive storm surge. Using it is as easy as visiting their Storm Surge Interactive Risk Maps webpage, selecting a category of storm (1-5) you’d like to see […]
New Details on the $500 Million BP Independent Research Initiative
Posted on September 30, 2010
A new press release yesterday from BP, outlining how the committed $500 million will be distributed (here in its entirety): BP and the Gulf of Mexico Alliance Announce Implementation of BP’s $500 Million Independent Research Initiative HOUSTON – BP and the Gulf of Mexico Alliance today announced plans for the implementation of BP’s $500 million […]
Is Your Community Getting New Flood Maps? Here's How to Ease the Sting
Posted on September 28, 2010
The fine folks over at Colorado State’s Natural Hazards Center have a neat summary of the National Flood Insurance Program’s Preferred Risk Policies program in their monthly newsletter. The short version? Property owners who find themselves newly mapped into high risk flood areas now have up to two years to apply for a Preferred Risk […]
Training: Basic Concepts for Floodplain Management [December 14-15, Virginia]
Posted on September 23, 2010
First, the bad news: the course is in Virginia. The good news: it sounds like a good spot to get an overview of what it means to manage a floodplain. From the organizer’s description: This training course will present the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) concepts in flood management, damage prevention terminology, and protocols from […]
Senate Passes 1-Year National Flood Insurance Program Extension
Posted on September 22, 2010
The US Senate agreed today to a one-year extension of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The House (which has already approved a five-year extension) is expected to adopt the Senate extension. This is obviously a short-term fix, but given that the program has expired four times this year alone, it’s still welcome news.
An Argument for Not Returning to Normal [Editorial]
Posted on September 20, 2010
An interesting editorial by Global Ethics professor Tom Sorell on why our natural post-disaster instinct to return things to normal is so often exactly the wrong response, and why we instead ought to work to “usher in discontinuity.” The problem with returning to “normal” is obvious: we’re often returning to the same conditions that put […]
Facebook vs Twitter: Which to Use for What in Emergency Management
Posted on September 9, 2010
Another good post from John Solomon over at In Case of Emergency, Read Blog. Here, he’s looking at how emergency management professionals use the two most popular social networking tools, Facebook and Twitter. In his interviews, he discovers that the two are NOT interchangeable. It turns out that in most cases the two services are […]