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Davies Consulting on Southern California Edison's response to last year's fierce windstorm.
"The company could have shortened restoration process by as much as two days had it not been for deficiencies such as a lack of situational awareness and "a fully functional Incident Command System" - a systematic emergency response tool the company is still implementing, the report stated." UN report that evaluates the role of climate change in altering characteristics of extreme events. It assesses experience with a wide range of options used by institutions, organizations, and communities to reduce exposure and vulnerability, and improve resilience, to climate extremes. Among these are early-warning systems, innovations in insurance coverage, improvements in infrastructure, and the expansion of social safety nets. 
An unprecedented account of the crisis inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. 
"You know that sinking feeling you have when there's too much on your plate? When you try to tackle your tasks by priority, but it feels like everything's important? Don't get overwhelmed—it's a problem that everyone faces at some point or another, and while it's difficult to skillfully juggle multiple priorities and competing responsibilities, it's not impossible. Here's how. Via Howard Rheingold 
The local chapter of the Red Cross unveiled its new high-tech disaster operations center that promises to streamline and speed up the response to San Diego’s next big earthquake or wildfire. ![The Ability To Extract and Communicate Insight from Data It's Going To Be Huge: McKinsey Quarterly [Video] | Innovation in Emergency Management | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/JhPPX2ck-2VX3w7sz-h8Gjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
Robin Good: In January of 2009 the McKinsey Quarterly published a video interview and a full article entitled "Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers" in which Google’s chief economist told executives in wired organizations how much they needed a sharper understanding of how technology empowers innovation.
In the video, Hal Varian says something that if you are trying to understand the emerging curation trend, is as relevant (if not more) today as three years ago when it was first published:
"The ability to take data - to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it's going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids.
Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data.
So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it.
I think statisticians are part of it, but it's just a part. You also want to be able to visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it effectively.
But I do think those skills - of being able to access, understand, and communicate the insights you get from data analysis - are going to be extremely important..."
Video interview: http://bit.ly/googlehalvarianoncuration (go to the section "Workers and managers")
You will need to register to read the full original article: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Hal_Varian_on_how_the_Web_challenges_managers_2286 Via Robin Good 
Lessons learned and challenges faced by Louisiana NGOs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina serve to inform potential policy changes and future research directions to improve long-term human recovery efforts following future disasters. 
Fortunately for the national capital region, Hurricane Irene and the East Coast earthquake proved to be relatively minor events, as far as disasters go. 
Local emergency notices about storms, tornadoes, and other disaters are now just a click away in Google Maps with Google Public Alerts. 
Official figures expected to show deficit due to energy imports to cover loss of power after nuclear plant catastophe (Japan to report first trade deficit since 1980 following Fukushima disaster: Official figures expected to show d...)... |
Past response strategies have focused on helping those in remote, rural areas. 
ForbesUrban Crowding And Climate Change: Why 21st Century Disasters Are DifferentForbesTwo alarming 21st century trends have disaster relief organizations and insurance companies on edge. 
Fukushima nuclear crisis: A disaster deemed 'inconceivable'. Dan Farber, professor of law | 2/27/12 | Leave a comment. Dan Farber. During the Fukushima nuclear crisis, government officials and industry representatives said that the tsunami ... 
"There’s a problem that constantly plagues us in this day of information overload, and that is the ability to sift the stream of incoming information into the bits that are valuable from those that aren’t. It’s a tough issue that we’ve been working on at Ushahidi, and re-working, a solution on for a while now. Our solution is called SwiftRiver. SwiftRiver is a free and open source intelligence platform that helps people curate and make sense of large amounts of information in a short amount of time. In practice, SwiftRiver enables the filtering and verification of real-time data from channels such as SMS, Email, Twitter and RSS feeds. It’s especially useful for organizations who need to sort their data by their unique expectations of authority and accuracy, as opposed to popularity. Such organizations include journalists, community based-organizations, PR/marketing, emergency responders, election monitoring groups and more." Via Howard Rheingold National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) head Syamsul Maarif on Thursday said that local branches of his organization would start leading relief ... 
The deaths of 74 elementary school students and 10 teachers in a small Japanese coastal town were among the nation's most poignant losses in last year's March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Since then, parents of the dead... Building Community Resilience to Disasters: A Way Forward to Enhance National Health Security | RAND
Provides a roadmap for federal, state, and local leaders who are developing plans to enhance community resilience for health security threats and describes options for building community resilience in key areas. 
GeoChat is a collaboration tool that allows anyone to chat, report, and get alerts on their phone. The International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting the goals of saving lives and protecting property during emergencies and disasters. "The Naval Postgraduate School, the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration (OASD-NII) and Via Howard Rheingold |
