The Giant, Underestimated Earthquake Threat to North America

This is a slightly old article but that doesn't affect the information in it, or the quality of the writing. A good basic overview of the Cascadia fault and why we only recently started planning for it.

The Giant, Underestimated Earthquake Threat to North America:

I found this article in Byliner's 102 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories of 2012.

'via Blog this'

The Complete Guide to What To Do Before, During, and After a Disaster

The Complete Guide to What To Do Before, During, and After a Disaster:

'via Blog this'

Sketch of the day - baby rhino!

This is Jamil.

Sketch of the day

Lizard? Gecko? Also courtesy of Jaclyn. She's an Instagram addict so she has plenty of pictures for me to reference.

Sketch of the day

Dr. Fred's pup, courtesy Jaclyn

Sketch of the day

Jaclyn's caribou from Christmas. 10 minutes.

New York State Storm Panel Recommends Major Changes

Sounds like a good range of cheap to expensive, hard to soft, manmade to natural solutions to pick from. The next step is going to be doing a cost-benefit analysis, identifying funding sources & then prioritizing / selecting action items based off of that information. That is, not all of these are going to be the final ideas, and not all of these are going to be rated the same when it comes to picking which project gets funding. Naturally people who aren't familiar with this sort of planning aren't going to be aware of that, so I hope somebody makes that clear to the media.

I love the answer to 'we didn't make a plan to sandbag the tunnel entrance because of funding'. Writing plans aren't that expensive compared to the damages, and can pay themselves back with avoiding even minor damage from common storms or other events. Sandbagging the tunnel surely would have been cheaper than closing it down, draining it, then replacing all the damaged interiors & infrastructure, but of course that's a hard argument to make when the sun is shining and the budget is tight. Concentrating on the numbers and bringing up what happens to politicians when they let their city flounder in a disaster should be the first and last bullet points when making presentations to decision makers. Still, you can lead a horse to floodwater...

New York State Storm Panel Recommends Major Changes - NYTimes.com:

'via Blog this'

Sketch of the Day

I've been inspired by my friend Amanda's daily self-portraits for two years, but didn't know what daily 'thing' I wanted to do. Since I now have a smartphone, a tablet, a stylus and SketchBook Mobile, there's no reason why I shouldn't start doing a daily digital sketch. That's my current goal, although I just made it 2 days ago and I'm already behind. I'll do a few extras to make it up. In the meantime, here's Jan 3rd: Puma and Jan 5th: James. 

By the way, check out her new series of Daily D'Art (art inspired by her cat, D'Artagnan).

12 tsunami-struck areas to raise ground level to aid rebuilding

My main concern with this is whether this mounded dirt will leave the area more vulnerable to major earthquake damage, subsidence, liquefaction etc. Perhaps there is some way of stabilizing the fill with modern technology? I just know that usually areas built on fill have the most structural problems during a quake. That being said, generally if there is a threat that is location specific, relocation is a good solution. You can't move the tsunami, but you can move your house. I'm curious how it will all work out.

12 tsunami-struck areas to raise ground level to aid rebuilding : National : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri):

'via Blog this'