The U.S. Geological Survey released their updated National Seismic Hazard Maps, showing 42 of the lower 48 states have a reasonable chance of facing damage from ground shaking in the next 50 years. Last updated 6 years ago, these new maps were developed with new ground motion models and compare changes between the 2008 maps and the 2014 ones.

The highest risk is on the west coast, intermountain west, and several clusters in the central and eastern United States. That really hasn’t changed since the 2008 map; instead, the potential severity and strength of earthquakes was upgraded for those areas based on new data. For example, risk was upgraded in the eastern United States and the New Madrid Zone based in part on recent earthquakes there.

The Pacific Northwest’s risk was upgraded due to similarities between its seismic hazards and those of Japan and Chile, both of which experienced…

Below is a guide to help you research smarter and gain a better understanding of your sources and source selection process.

1. The first step in the research process is identification of the problem you are trying to solve.  This requires written acknowledgment of what you are looking for and why.   Spend some time thinking about this and write down at least three detailed reasons.  The more work you do on the front end will save you time in the long run.

 Here are some questions to help guide this process:

• Do you need an answer to a question?
• Are you trying to prove or disprove a fact or hypothesis?
• Are you collecting information to compare and contrast?

1. After you have determined the problem statement or research question, consider what you might already know about the subject of inquiry.  I often complete this step by brainstorming in two categories: material information…

We talk about situation awareness a lot. In fact, it permeates a lot of our central assumptions and decisions.  It also impacts how we strategize about our operations and planning, especially as it relates to information management. So really, what is situation awareness?  How does it relate to information management?

Situation awareness is the primary conceptual tool that disaster personnel use to manage all the information that disasters create. Endsley (1988) describes situation awareness as “the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future.” According to Endsley (2000), situation awareness is a distinct stage from decision making and the subsequent performance of actions. Endsley (1995, 2000) defines three levels of situation awareness leading to decision making and the performance of actions:

• Level 1 – Perception of current situation,
• Level…

In recent years, a greater no. of universities have created emergency management units and acquired dedicated staff to manage them.  This example of Rutgers’ experience after Hurricane Sandy is instructive: Hurricane Sandy exposes flaws in Rutgers’ emergency response, report says.

In the teeth of the fiercest hurricane to hit New Jersey in generations, Rutgers University secured its campuses, safely evacuated thousands of students, managed large shelters without incident and maintained crucial data on its vast computer networks.

But Hurricane Sandy also exposed critical weaknesses in the university’s emergency response, including a failure to communicate well with students and staff, a shortage of personnel at the emergency nerve center and, perhaps most importantly, a lack of backup power, resulting in the loss of decades-old scientific research samples.