SEIR Model to Address the Impact of Face Masks amid COVID-19 Pandemic

When vaccines are not available, alternative strategies are required to decrease SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Behavior of the population and government regulations, such as hand hygiene, quarantine of exposed persons, isolation of symptomatic persons, and travel restriction, play an essential role in…

HOW WILL HUMANS SURVIVE A GLOBAL CATASTROPHE?

One suggested way to save humankind in the event of a deadly pandemic or other extreme global catastrophe is establishing a safe refuge – on an island or in such far-out places as the moon or under water — where a portion of the human population can stay alive.

STUDY WEIGHS THE RISKS OF CLIMATE GEOENGINEERING

To slow down the accelerating pace of climate change, scientists are working on radical geoengineering technologies like space mirrors, ocean iron fertilization, and cirrus cloud thinning to tweak the earth’s climate system. But a new study published in the journal Risk Analysis finds that none of these human interventions are risk free. Instead, “they merely shift risk or redistribute it,” says lead author Benjamin Sovacool, professor of energy policy at the University of Sussex Business School and a professor at Aarhus University and Boston University. “These risk tradeoffs must be evaluated if some of the more radical geoengineering technologies are to be deployed.”

New Research Analyzes Millions of Twitter Posts During Hurricanes to Understand How People Communicate in a Disaster

In the face of a potentially disastrous storm like Hurricane Ida, people take to Twitter and other social media sites to communicate vital information. New research published in the journal Risk Analysis suggests that monitoring and analyzing this social media “chatter” during a natural disaster could help decision makers learn how to plan for and mitigate the impacts of severe weather events in their communities.

Deterrence against terrorist attacks in sports-mega events: A method to identify the optimal portfolio of defensive countermeasures

Sports mega-events, such as the upcoming Olympic Games, are ideal targets for terrorist attacks, due to their visibility, size, and number of people involved. Sports mega-events differ from other well-studied counter-terrorism analysis due to the defensive measures being made public…

Earthquake Threat! Understanding the Intention to Prepare for the Big One

How do people in high-risk regions for natural disasters, perceive risks and what influences their intentions to prepare? A new study, soon to be published in the journal Risk Analysis, investigates whether residents of higher-risk earthquake areas within the region…

After the Big Storm: How to Supply Emergency Power to Residents of Rural and Suburban Communities During Multi-Day Outages

New research suggests that cooperative strategies for sharing emergency power among households can be 10 to 40 times less costly than running individual gas-powered generators

Organizational Resilience to Disruption Risks: Developing Metrics and Testing Effectiveness of Operational Strategies

This study draws from the system resilience literature to propose three different metrics for evaluating the resilience performance of organizations against disruptions: the initial loss due to the disruption, the maximum loss, and the total loss over time. The first…

System analysis of wildfire-water supply risk in Colorado, U.S.A. with Monte Carlo wildfire and rainfall simulation

Water supply impairment from increased contaminant mobilization and transport after a wildfire is a major concern for communities that depend on surface water from fire prone watersheds. This work demonstrates the importance of considering water system characteristics when assessing wildfire…

SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The international journal Risk Analysis has published a timely special issue for May 2021, “Global Systemic Risk and Resilience for Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19.” Featuring 11 papers written for this issue over the past year, the collection represents a sampling of insights and viewpoints from scholars across risk sciences and resilience analytics to guide decision-making and operations related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

HOW MANY COUNTRIES ARE READY FOR NUCLEAR-POWERED ELECTRICITY?

A new study in the journal Risk Analysis suggests that countries representing more than 80 percent of potential growth in low-carbon electricity demand—in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa—may lack the economic or institutional quality to deploy nuclear power to meet their energy needs. The authors suggest that if nuclear power is to safely expand its role in mitigating climate change, countries need to radically improve their ability to manage the technology.