ITRC PNW Transformational Resilience Network

Urban planners, governments and developers are increasingly interested in making cities “liveable”. But what features contribute to liveability? Which areas in cities are the least and most liveable? The various liveability rankings – where Australia tends to do quite well – don’t provide much useful guidance. In a recently released report, Creating Liveable Cities in Australia , our team defined and produced the first baseline measure of liveability in Australia’s capital cities. We broke...

When the clouds darken and rain starts pouring down, many Houston-area elementary school students get nervous and start to sob — a sign of the long-lasting effects of watching the water levels rise during and after Hurricane Harvey. For Donna Wotkyns, a licensed social worker in Houston, that reaction shows exactly why ramping up resources for long-term mental health services for Texas students is necessary. “I’m a big believer in … support groups, getting together multiple children or youth...

On Sunday night, flames swept into Santa Rosa and other cities across the region with little warning . At least 24 people have been confirmed dead , with hundreds displaced and nearly 300 still reported missing . Meanwhile, hundreds of residents from hotel owners to teachers and students to local government officials to relief workers are marshalling help those to affected. Here's what they've been up to in the days since the devastation began. 1. Farms are taking in displaced animals, and...

The speed and ferocity of the wildfires raging through Northern California's wine country have caught many residents off guard and left state officials scrambling to contain the flames. But for fire researchers, these devastating blazes are part of a much larger pattern unfolding across the Western United States. So far this year, fires in the U.S. have consumed more than 8.5 million acres - an area bigger than the state of Maryland. The cause is hot, dry conditions nationwide. Heat records...

It can be hard for us outsiders to battle "disaster fatigue." Still, 21 days after the disaster, which was well predicted 10 days before that (a month ago, in total) -- and we can not figure it out? People are still waiting in line hours: "What I got was 3 bottles of water and 4 cans of Pringles." Most with no sanitation, no power, no running water, no cell communication, one thousand, five-hundred roads out -- "What are you going to do today, t.o.d.a.y.?" is never answered.

This was produced by KPJR Films, and edited by Jen Bradwell.

What are ACEs? ACEs are adverse childhood experiences that harm children's developing brains so profoundly that the effects show up decades later; they cause much of chronic disease, most mental illness, and are at the root of most violence. ...

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There’s nothing like the giant oil companies to provide us all with lessons about power and prejudice. The climate crisis offers a lens to understand many of the inherent injustices on this planet: There’s an almost perfect inverse relationship between how much of the problem you caused and how much of the pain you’re feeling. Furthermore, it offers the best chance to actually right some of these wrongs: The economic rearrangement that must accompany any successful effort to fix the planet’s...

Like the storm itself, the impact of Hurricane Harvey on Houstonians' mental health promises to linger. Although specific estimates vary widely, the results of numerous research studies suggest residents who suffered a profound personal loss due to the storm are at significantly elevated risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. "A large body of research conducted after disasters in the past decades suggests that the burden of PTSD among persons who were exposed to disasters is significant," a...

After 9/11, I was asked by the Baltimore City Health Commissioner to help prepare the city for a radiation terrorism event, because my entire career up until that point had been in radiation-based medical imaging. I didn’t know anything about public health preparedness at the time, but I found it very fulfilling to work with the city health department and other first responders, especially fire and police. Public health preparedness science and research is more than multi-disciplinary, it’s...

Climate change may have contributed to the suicides of nearly 60,000 Indian farmers and farm workers over the past three decades, according to new research that examines the toll rising temperatures are already taking on vulnerable societies. Illustrating the extreme sensitivity of the Indian agricultural industry to spikes in temperature, the study from the University of California, Berkeley, found an increase of just 1C on an average day during the growing season was associated with 67...