New GAO Report: Disaster Housing: Improved Cost Data and Guidance Would Aid FEMA Activation Decisions, GAO-21-116: Published: Dec 15, 2020. Note that the full report is 50 pages.

New report from FEMA: Building Codes Save: A Nationwide Study Losses Avoided as a Result of Adopting Hazard-Resistant Building Codes, November 2020

Note this is a major report – 189 pages.

From the HSDL: Climate Change & Health: Assessing State Preparedness

A new report titled Climate Change & Health: Assessing State Preparedness has just been released by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health along with Trust for America’s Health. In the report, all 50 states and Washington D.C. were studied to evaluate how vulnerable they are to climate change.

In order to make their assessments, the researches developed three “domains of inquiry” that would be measured:Climate change’s disastrous effect on the planet
Vulnerability: the degree to which physical, biological, and socioeconomic systems are susceptible to and unable to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change.

Public health preparedness: actions taken to build, apply, and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, and ameliorate negative effects from public health emergencies. Climate-related adaptation: adjustment in natural or human systems to a new or changing environment that exploits beneficial opportunities or moderates negative effects.

According to the study, Utah, Maryland, and Colorado rank among the states that are the least vulnerable and the most prepared; whereas Texas, Mississippi, and West Virginia are among the states that are most vulnerable and least prepared.

New Book from Island Press.: A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas. [Note that a table of contents is available on that website.]

Thanks to Dr. Lois Cohen for the citation.

From HSWire: Resilience: Making Our Infrastructure Safer. “Saurabh Amin, a systems engineer at MIT, focuses on making transportation, electricity, and water infrastructure more resilient against disruptions. “There are a lot of commonalities among these networks — they are built and operated by human actors, but their functionality is governed by physical laws. So, that is what drives me forward,” Amin says.”

From the NYTimes: 2 Hurricanes Devastated Central America. Will the Ruin Spur a Migration Wave? The storms displaced hundreds of thousands of people, creating a new class of refugees with more reason than ever to migrate north and setting up an early test for the incoming Biden administration.

Update: A related article from ForeignPolicy: Honduras and Nicaragua Have Been Hit By Some of the Worst Natural Disasters in Decades. If Biden gets the response right, he could put the region on better footing for years to come.

From the AP: Survey finds race- and sex-based harassment ‘common’ at FEMA.

“More than a quarter of employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency said they were harassed or discriminated against based on their gender or race, according to a survey released Wednesday as part of the fallout from allegations of sexual harassment by a senior official at the organization.

The survey by the RAND Corp. found that such civil rights violations were “common” at FEMA, reported by about 29% of the employees surveyed last year.

FEMA requested the survey in response to an internal report that found that the former head of the agency’s personnel office had improper sexual relationships with subordinates and created a “toxic” work environment, including by giving preferential treatment to his fraternity brothers.”

New, 50 page report from the Congressional Research Service: COVID-19 Relief Assistance to Small Businesses: Issues and Policy Options

From the GAO: COVID-19: Urgent Actions Needed to Better Ensure an Effective Federal Response. GAO-21-191: Nov 30, 2020.

From HSToday, this article: GAO: Urgent Pandemic Response Actions Needed

New book from the National Academy of Sciences: A Framework for Assessing Mortality and Morbidity After Large-Scale Disasters. It is a free download from their website.