Our expert in disaster recovery and climate change adaptation calls for a longer-term response to conflict zones affected by severe flooding, such as Libya and Pakistan.
Age can make recovery harder after a disaster like the tornado that tore apart Greenfield, Iowa, in May 2024.
AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
Shannon Gibson, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The agreement still leaves many unanswered questions, as well as concerns from vulnerable countries about who will qualify, who pays and who is in charge.
Thousands of Maui’s cats, dogs and other companion animals went missing or were injured.
Maui Humane Society
Animal shelters and other organizations that support pets and their owners after disasters will still need help months after the media has moved on.
Destroyed homes and buildings in Lahaina on Aug. 10, 2023, in the aftermath of wildfires on western Maui, Hawaii.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
Wildfires on Maui are a crippling blow to the island’s tourism industry, which generates half of its jobs. But New Orleans and Kauai show that comebacks are possible.
Earthquakes, hurricanes and other disasters can cause a lot of personal upheaval.
Omer Alven/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Food, shelter and medical supplies are important but not the only things that help people get back on their feet.
In mid-2018, nearly a year after Hurricane Harvey, this church’s gym in Texas was still serving as a warehouse for donated goods.
Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Within two weeks of Hurricane Fiona, FEMA had accepted most Puerto Rican housing aid applications. Nearly all those early approvals cover only $700 in assistance and won’t pay the tab for rebuilding.
Hurricane damage to affordable housing can leave business owners struggling to find employees.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Ilan Noy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
A proposed new airport at Tarras would affect the entire South Island economy. Twelve years on from the Canterbury earthquakes, have the implications of such a project been properly thought through?
Floodwaters wrecked Lismore resident Robert Bialowas’s house.
Jason O'Brien/AAP
The long delays in housing displaced flood victims point to the need to develop a permanent reserve of temporary housing to be available wherever and whenever disaster strikes.
Research on the impacts on schooling of COVID and bushfire and flood disasters has found academically the kids are mostly OK. It’s their well-being and recovery from trauma that demand our attention.
The federal election presents an opportunity to promote plans for improving national disaster governance and resilience. But the silence on these issues in political debates has been remarkable.
As Fiji did after 2016’s catastrophic cyclone, Tonga will likely face challenges with building materials and costs, and low levels of technical expertise. But these can be overcome.
Professor of Civil, Environmental & Ecological Engineering, Director of the Healthy Plumbing Consortium and Center for Plumbing Safety, Purdue University
Professor of Globalisation and Development; Director of the Oxford Martin Programmes on Technological and Economic Change, The Future of Work and the Future of Development, University of Oxford