The Diva is working with some local emergency management officials re the interaction of  local houses of worship with their local community. She is in the process of working up a website devoted to Disasters and Faith-Based Organizations. At the present time, it is easier to find information about guidance to houses of worship about what they should do, rather than case examples of what they have done during and after a disaster. I would appreciate feedback on your interest such a website.

More specifically, I would appreciate any information and documented examples of any projects or programs that specifically address faith- based organizations providing services and resources to their community after disaster and on normal days. And is there any information about the costs of such efforts, or what they anticipate the costs might be?

I had occasion to pull up this excellent journal article, published in HSAJ in 2006, to answer an inquiry this week. It remains one of the best articles on the topic of Lessons Learned so I thought I would share it.

See: Disasters: Why we Repeat Them and How We Can Learn Them

Connecticut Council of Governments says preparation, resilience key to recovery from disasters

Community resilience — made possible by advance planning — is a key to ensure faster recovery to any future disasters, including weather events, the two chairman of the state Long-Term Recovery Committee told area mayors and first selectmen Wednesday.

The committee is co-chaired by George Bradner, property casualty director for the state Insurance Department, and Mike Lettieri, director of the state Department of Economic and Community Development.

Among the challenges Connecticut faces in creating the resilience it needs to respond to future disasters are the fact that it has 169 independent cities and towns, with many different zoning standards in place, and that legislation doesn’t always support community resilience

For those of you interested in these topics, I recommend you get a subscription (free) to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Journal of Safety and Security at Sea.  It is a quarterly publication, nicely done on glossy paper.  The current issue ( spring 2014) is devoted to Maritime Border Security.  You can subscribe online here: http://www.uscg.mil/proceedings

I ran across this report, done by the Zurich Insurance Group, on cyber risk. Although it is aimed at the business community, I thought the executive summary was compelling. Among the points made in the ad that I saw was:

The report argues that the Internet’s stability is likely to decrease in the future – and given that it is ever more tightly linked with key systems such as the power grid and water supply, even one cyber failing has far-reaching destructive potential.

The full report (32pp) is titled Risk Nexus; Beyond data breaches: global interconnections of cyber risk.

The University of MA Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities After Disasters (CRSCAD): International Conference on Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Sustainable Reconstruction, May 8 & 9, 2014.  Conference presentations are available from this Website.

The MIT Sea Grant Program: Climate Change Symposium – Sustaining Coastal Cities, June 16-18, 2014. Videos from the symposium are available from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiXcg-nr72TNUTqNdFIOlMFSd_ZKqzTMm.

It is hard to keep up with the many reports and the various versions of the International Panel on Climate Change. I defer to this description from the HSDL about them.  See this tidy summary: IPCC Releases Working Group III’s Report on Climate Change

This article about Jackson, WY provides an interesting look at the phemonemon of a landslide, since one can watch this one as it occurs in slow motion.  See: Creeping landslide devouring part of Wyoming town

As is true of the fast moving landslide, as recently experienced by Oso, Washington, questions about whether or not such events are triggered by man-made actions abound.