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The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) began operations 30 years ago as a way to address the growing public costs of dealing with the effects of flooding. Now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) Federal Insurance Administration (FIA), which administers the program, and FEMA's Mitigation Directorate believe that it is time to review the effects of the program, both intended and unintended, as well as the effectiveness of the program in accomplishing its goals (see DR #291). The results of these inquiries will be used to guide future public policy decisions relating to the NFIP and thus to wise management and use of the nation's floodplains.
Recently, FIA produced a document that identifies six broad areas of inquiry for research. In turn, these areas suggest numerous questions relating to the overall purpose and scope of the program and to narrower inquiries relating to specific program components and activities. The broad areas of study include:
The agency is now inviting scholars and technicians in floodplain management to
[Adapted from the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) Insider Newsletter]
The Compton Foundation is supporting an analysis of historical approaches to flood loss reduction in the U.S. over the past 150 years. This study is being conducted by Jim Wright of the Floodplain Management Group, formerly with TVA, and a longtime associate of ASFPM. Previously, Jim prepared a comprehensive account of major developments through the 1960s, and he is now integrating the subsequent significant progress the nation has made in developing flood mitigation measures to reduce economic and environmental losses. The resulting document will review past approaches, present the current state of our nation's efforts to deal with flood disasters, and discuss future options to reduce flood losses.
Jim is seeking information on the various mitigation measures that have been undertaken to reduce the nation's vulnerability to extreme natural events. If you can provide information or data or know of pertinent studies, please contact Jim at wrightfpmgrp@ntown.com or call (423) 579-1414.
The Department of Commerce, Office of Inspector General (OIG), is conducting a review of hurricane research and forecasting. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) are funded by the Department and both sponsor and conduct hurricane research and forecasts. The OIG is interested in learning about other work in this area that is being performed outside the Department. Our goal is to review the coordination and extent of information sharing among federal agencies, universities, and any other groups that may be conducting hurricane research and forecasting.
Responses should include: 1) the research/forecasting group; 2) funding source; 3) type of work performed; and 4) contact information.
Kindly e-mail your responses to Marie McCaulley, mmccaulley@doc.gov. Thanks.
[Adapted from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) Newsletter]
The International Handbook of Earthquake and Engineering Seismology, edited by P.C. Jennings, H. Kanamore, and W.H.K. Lee, will be published in 2001, and a general call for contributions has been published in Seismological Research Letters, March-April 1999, Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 170-174. Details are available on the World Wide Web at http://caldera.wr.usgs.gov.
As part of this work, Yousef Bozorgnia is compiling information on "Structural Engineering Computer Programs for Earthquake Engineering." To ensure a comprehensive list, Prof. Bozorgnia is asking authors and publishers of such computer programs to send a short e-mail to yousef@exponenet.com by July 30. Forms requesting relevant information will then be mailed to those who respond.
[Also adapted from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) Newsletter]
The Uzbekistan Republic (U.R.) Academy of Sciences is seeking partners to develop U.S./U.R. cooperative research projects in earthquake engineering analysis and design. For more information, contact Tojiboy Buriyev, Head, CAD of Construction Laboratory, Institute for Cybernetics, Uzbekistan Republic Academy of Sciences, Uzbekistan; fax: 998-371-162-7321; e-mail: tburiyev@vega.tashkent.su -or- shermat@hal.freenet.uz.
The closing event of the United Nations International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) - the "IDNDR Programme Forum" - was held July 5-9 in Geneva, Switzerland. Persons interested in the IDNDR - particularly its continuation into the next millennium - should consult the documents resulting from that meeting. At least three major statements were produced: The Geneva Mandate On Disaster Reduction; General Conclusions: A Brief Summary of 40 Sessions, prepared by Robert M. Hamilton, General Reporter; and Strategy for a Safer World in the 21st Century: Disaster and Risk Reduction, which includes an Introduction, Vision, Objectives, Implementation, Responsible Parties, and Review.
These and other resulting reports are available on the IDNDR Web site: http://www.idndr.org. For additional information, contact the U.N. IDNDR Secretariat, Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland; tel: (41 22) 917 9711; fax: (41 22) 91790 98/99; e-mail: idndr@dha.unicc.org.
[These are some of the latest and more useful Internet resources we've encountered. For an extended list of selected Internet sites dealing with hazards and disaster management, see http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/sites/sites.html.]
http://cindi.usgs.gov
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) extensively monitors and
evaluates threats from many natural hazards. Its resources include a
global seismic network, a national streamflow monitoring program,
regional volcano observatories, and long-standing interagency
partnerships in disaster mitigation and response. To help synthesize
the vast amount of information available on hazards, the USGS has
created the Center for Integration of Natural Disaster Information
(CINDI) - a research facility for 1) developing and evaluating
technology for information integration and dissemination; 2)
performing research in data integration, analysis, modeling, and
decision support; and 3) supporting the ongoing evolution of the USGS
processing and delivery of hazards data. The CINDI Web site provides
background information about the center, and serves as "a gateway to
information about natural hazards and disasters." The center itself
selects individual disasters as case studies. The current focus is
Hurricane Mitch, and this site includes much information about that
Central American disaster.
http://www.usgs.gov/network/science/earth/usgs.html
For those of you (like ourselves) who are sometimes bewildered by
the labyrinthine network of USGS Web resources, we suggest this URL -
an index of the more than 150 USGS Web servers.
http://www.esri.com/hazards
Under the Project Impact initiative, FEMA and the Environmental
Systems Research Institute (ESRI) have formed a national partnership
aimed in part at providing multihazard maps and information to U.S.
residents, business owners, schools, community groups, and local
governments via the Internet. The information provided via the ESRI
Web site is intended to assist in building disaster-resistant
communities across the country by sharing geographic knowledge about
local hazards. This Web site allows users to create on-line hazard
maps for which they can specify both location (by ZIP code, city, or
congressional district) and the hazards to be shown. It also directs
users to other sources of information - both on the Web and in the
real world.
http://ns.noaa.gov/NESDIS/NESDIS_Home.html
We recently received a nice 18-page booklet summarizing the
considerable hazards support activities of NOAA's National
Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). The
booklet describes NESDIS tools and assets for observing and analyzing
hazards; the service's programs for detection and monitoring of hazard
events; its efforts to respond to and mitigate natural hazards; and
the resources it offers (primarily via the Web) to educate the general
public about hazards. NESDIS also manages extensive databases
concerning historical and current disaster events. The URL above
provides an entree to this great resource of information. For details
about acquiring the NESDIS booklet, Hazards Support Activities,
contact the NESDIS Public Affairs Office, Federal Building 4,
Washington, DC 20233; (301) 763-8282; e-mail:
neverson@nesdis.noaa.gov.
subscribe@eeri.org
http://www.eeri.org
The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) has
established a new e-mail listserve to apprise members and other
persons interested in earthquake hazard mitigation of special EERI
announcements in a timely way. To subscribe send an e-mail to the
address above and in the body write, "subscribe eeri-announce."
Persons can also subscribe through the EERI Web site also listed
above.
http://www.cae.canterbury.ac.nz
Via their Web site, the Centre for Advanced Engineering,
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, has recently
announced several new publications on risk and disaster management:
http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/ewc98
http://www.idndr.org/docs
In September 1998, as a contribution to the International Decade
for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), the GeoForschungsZentrum
Potsdam and the German Committee for the IDNDR hosted the
"International IDNDR Conference on Early Warning Systems for the
Reduction of Natural Disasters." The Web sites above both offer the
findings and conclusions from that meeting, including several full-
text publications:
http://www.usd.edu/dmhi/
The Disaster Mental Health Institute (DMHI) is a State of South
Dakota Board of Regents Center of Excellence offering an undergraduate
minor in disaster response and a doctoral specialty track in clinical/
disaster psychology at the University of South Dakota. The institute
also hosts an annual "Conference on Innovations in Disaster Mental
Health" [see the conference announcements below]. The DMHI Web site
provides in-depth information about the institute and conference, a
list of available publications, as well as several on-line booklets on
coping with the aftermath of disasters. For more information about
this institute, contact the Disaster Mental Health Institute,
University of South Dakota - SDU 116, 414 East Clark Street,
Vermillion, SD 57069-2390; (605) 677-6575 or 1-800-522-9684; fax:
(605) 677-6604; or see the Web site above.
http://www.compumentor.org/y2k
From this URL, the CompuMentor Project, which provides volunteer-
based computer assistance to schools and other nonprofit
organizations, is offering a free manual outlining a step-by-step
process for creating a plan of action to identify and mitigate
potential Y2K disruptions. The site also offers a thorough description
of the Y2K problem, definitions of Y2K terms, Y2K references and
links, and Y2K Frequently Asked Questions. Printed copies of the Y2K
workbook are also available for $17.50 ($35 for nonprofit
organizations with budgets over $500,000). Contact CompuMentor at 89
Stillman Street, San Francisco, CA 94107; fax: (415) 512-9629.
Lightning strikes! The Emergency Information Infrastructure Partnership (EIIP) now knows all too well how devastating lightning can be. The server used by the EIIP Virtual Forum was hit by lightning a few days ago - and to make matters worse, the tape backup was in progress, and the EIIP lost the backup as well as other data on the drive. The Virtual Forum is back in business after a lot of work, and the weekly Tuesday and Wednesday 12 Noon EDT sessions are back on- line.
We ask emergency management supporters of the EIIP Virtual Forum to check out the site status at http://www.emforum.org/status.htm. Part of the data lost was all mail lists subscribers. Please resubscribe to the mail lists by going to the "site status" page (URL above), and please note that some mail lists have been consolidated because of overlaps in discussions.
Another noteworthy change: For the time being, User Accounts and Passwords have been disabled for Virtual Forum chats. The EIIP lost all of that information and rather than ask everyone to recreate accounts at this time, discussions will be open and participants are asked to login by first and last names at: http://www.emforum.org. The EIIP appreciates your patience and continued support.
The "Disaster Grads" e-mail discussion list is intended for informal discussion and information sharing among students (both graduate and undergraduate) who do research in the area of hazards and disasters. Currently, the list is a low-traffic affair (so it does not involve an overwhelming number of messages), but it has proven useful and a great place to ask for support or resources. The list currently includes students from all over the U.S. in a wide variety of graduate programs, such as geography, engineering, public health, sociology, and economics, to name just a few. To subscribe to the Disaster Grads list, send an e-mail message to listproc@lists.colorado.edu, and in the body of the message write "subscribe disaster_grads [your first name] [your last name]" (for example: subscribe disaster_grads Mia Hamm). For more information about this service, contact Alice Fothergill, Natural Hazards Information Center, Campus Box 482, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0482; e-mail: alice.fothergill@colorado.edu.
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