Brazil oil spill threatens coastal resilience

Communities on the northern shores of Brazil’s coast are experiencing one of the largest oil spills in human history, the source of which is unknown. Originally appearing on only a few beaches in early September, crude oil has now washed up on over 2,000 kilometers (roughly 1,240 miles) along the coastlines of nine states. Due to a slow government reaction, volunteers across Brazil have been photographed rolling up oil slicks and disposing of them in trash bags. As the global economy is highly dependent on oil and related industries, the potential for future oil spills underscores the need to develop resilient practices for mitigation and recovery.

Boston’s vulnerable waterfront system: reactivating the city’s 47 miles of coastline to increase access and resiliency in the face of rising tides and temperatures

Back in 2016, the City of Boston released an action plan to combat climate change as part of Imagine Boston 2030, a document outlining the government’s plan for the future of Boston. Known as Climate Ready Boston, this initiative includes updated climate projections, vulnerability assessments and climate resilience strategies, as well as establishes eight focus areas for investment where risks, particularly coastal and riverine flooding, are spatially concentrated. The report highlighted three major threats to the city in the coming decades: sea level rise, extreme heat and extreme precipitation.

Boston scrambles to organize resources for the homeless ahead of a "bomb cyclone"

Much of the East Coast is currently bracing for a severe storm that meteorologists have characterized as a “bomb cyclone”, otherwise known as bombogenesis. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), bombogenesis happens “…when a midlatitude cyclone rapidly intensifies, dropping at least 24 millibars [of atmospheric pressure] over 24 hours…which creates what is known as a bomb cyclone”. While such a storm poses risks common to any major snowfall event, the cold that is forecast to follow the storm may pose an even greater disruption. The cyclone’s circulation will carry cold air down from around the North Pole and could decrease temperatures in the Northeast by up to 40 degrees below normal at the end of the week.

Boston officials visit counterparts in Manchester, share resilience lessons learned from marathon bombing and arena attack

GRI Founding Director Dr. Stephen Flynn was joined by Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans during a recent U.S. State Department-sponsored trip to London and Manchester. The visit was part of an initiative to share lessons learned from the Boston Marathon bombing and to learn firsthand how the community in Manchester responded to, and is recovering from, the arena attack. Other members of the delegation included representatives from the Boston Mayor’s office and Dave Fortier, who founded the One World Strong Foundation after being injured in the marathon bombing.

Book Interview | Critical Infrastructures Resilience: Policy and Engineering Principles

"This book is the result of having taught a graduate course comprising public policy and engineering students at Northeastern University, Boston, for the past 4 years," co-author Bahtia told editor-in-chief Zoran Obradovic. "The genesis of this textbook came out of teaching the course, and the final contents have evolved significantly given the pace of new developments within this field. Throughout these years, we have found no good textbook that covers the engineering and policy aspects of critical infrastructures resilience in comprehensive yet principled way."

Blackout hits northern Puerto Rico following fire, explosion

An explosion and fire at an electric substation threw much of northern Puerto Rico into darkness late Sunday in a setback for the U.S. territory's efforts to fully restore power more than five months after Hurricane Maria started the longest blackout in U.S. history. The island's Electric Power Authority said several municipalities were without power, including parts of the capital, San Juan, but they were optimistic it could be restored within a day as they worked to repair a substation that controls voltage. The blast illustrated the challenges of restoring a power grid that was already crumbling before it was devastated by the Category 4 hurricane. In many cases, power workers are repairing equipment that should have long been replaced but remained online due to the power authority's yearslong financial crisis. PREPA is worth roughly $4 billion, carries $9 billion in debt and has long been criticized for political patronage and inefficiency. It also struggled with frequent blackouts, including an island-wide outage in September 2016. It was not immediately known what caused Sunday's fire, which was quickly extinguished. Officials said the explosion knocked two other substations offline and caused a total loss of 400 megawatts worth of generation.