November 2014

In my last blog post, I discussed aspects related to the TRIA reauthorization bills that have been proposed by the House of Representatives and the Senate. Unfortunately, efforts to advance these measures stalled during the late summer months as Congress prepared for the 2014 mid-term elections.

OK, so an epic snowstorm just dropped five feet or more of snow on parts of western New York state, and the 24-hour United States snowfall record set in 1921 may get beaten—and it isn't even Thanksgiving yet. What's going on?

"What if" scenarios drive many of the most important questions in catastrophe modeling. However, "what if" scenarios do not have to focus solely on events that may happen in the future; they can also reflect on those that happened in the past—and what their present day impacts would be.

The fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released on November 1. It is a formal synthesis of findings from various working groups and previously published special reports—some of which have been available for more than a year.

AIR is developing worldwide flood hazard maps for markets where it is not yet possible to create fully probabilistic flood models (as we've done for the U.S., the UK, and Germany).

Engineers without Borders (EWB), a national nonprofit organization, unites 13,000+ volunteers from a variety of engineering and non-engineering disciplines to help to make the world a better place.