Health Risks Are Rising in Mountain Areas Flooded by Hurricane Helene and Cut Off From Clean Water, Power and Hospitals

EXPERT: Sarabeth Baxter Lowe
FEATURED IN: The Conversation — Tuesday, October 1, 2024
OVERVIEW: Hurricane Helene’s flooding has subsided, but health risks are growing in hard-hit regions of the North Carolina mountains, where many people lost access to power and clean water. …
 
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Planning Now for the Disasters of Tomorrow

EXPERT: Jennifer M Trivedi
FEATURED IN: UDaily — Saturday, August 10, 2024
OVERVIEW: “Disasters know no boundary lines. Floods, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, conflict — they happen anywhere and everywhere on our planet. It’s why the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center (DRC) has a global reach, and it’s why that reach has global impact. You could see both DRC’s reach and impact during a daylong workshop for graduate students, held during its 60th anniversary celebration earlier this year. The study and work those students were doing will help policy makers and leaders around the world prepare for disasters of the future.”…
 
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How heat and a hurricane combined for misery in Houston

EXPERT: Jennifer M Trivedi
FEATURED IN: E&E News by Politico — Friday, July 19, 2024
OVERVIEW: “Compound disasters such as hurricanes and heat waves are increasingly testing Texas and other states along the Gulf of Mexico, said Jennifer Trivedi, an expert on disaster vulnerability at the University of Delaware. […]”

“‘There’s a phrase people use: “There’s’ no such thing as a natural disaster,”‘ Trivedi said. ‘Really what we mean by that is there is always some sort of human intervention, human decision-making, human structures that are shaping the systems that really ramp a hazard into a disaster.’ […]”

“At the same time, experts say equitable citywide access to cooling centers and other emergency resources is crucial for protecting vulnerable populations when the lights do go out. And, in the long term, building up climate resilience in socially vulnerable communities is key to better outcomes when disasters strike. ‘It really is an equity question,’ Trivedi said. ‘That’s something that has to be part of these conversations.’ […]”
 
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Evacuating is expensive. Recovery is long and hard.

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
FEATURED IN: Perci — Monday, September 18, 2023
OVERVIEW: “Jennifer Trivedi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology is Core Faculty at University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center. She studies “the people part of disasters. How people make decisions before, during and after a disaster and what influences those decisions – their personal histories and circumstances as well as larger social and cultural contexts they find themselves in.” She spoke with us recently. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.” …
 
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This N.J. town erected barriers to hold back the sea. A public fight erupted.

EXPERT: A.R. Siders
FEATURED IN: Washington Post — Friday, August 18, 2023
OVERVIEW: NORTH WILDWOOD, N.J. — From atop the local lifeguard headquarters, Mayor Patrick Rosenello looks out over the shrinking shoreline of his hometown.

To the north, past the kaleidoscope of umbrellas that dot the beach, he can see the massive bulkheads the city has installed to hold back the encroaching sea — the same ones at the heart of an ongoing fight with the state, which has sued North Wildwood and fined it more than $8.5 million for that and other work it says was unauthorized, misguided and destructive.
 
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A history of Hawaii’s sirens and the difference it could have made against Maui fires

EXPERT: Sarah Elizabeth DeYoung
FEATURED IN: National Public Radio (NPR) — Monday, August 14, 2023
OVERVIEW: DRC Core Faculty contributed to this recent article on the key factors that should be considered in warning systems in the context of the #MauiFires
 
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Friday Fellow Feature: Tykeara Mims

EXPERT: Sarabeth Lowe
FEATURED IN: The Bill Anderson Fund — Friday, August 4, 2023
OVERVIEW: Our featured fellow for August is TyKeara Mims, a DrPH student studying Epidemiology at Texas A&M University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Spelman College and a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in Community Health Education (epidemiology minor) from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. …
 
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A Caribbean island’s quest to become the world’s first climate-resilient nation

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
FEATURED IN: BBC — Wednesday, April 19, 2023
OVERVIEW: … “This element of neighbourly communication is hugely important for early warning systems, says Jennifer Trivedi, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center. ‘Often, when I ask people in the field where they heard about an incoming hurricane, or changing floodwaters, they talk about hearing it from friends or neighbours,’ she says. ‘Someone knocked on their door. A friend called their house. They heard about it at church. Those networks are essential because people know them, they trust them.’ This intricate communication chain provides important layers to reach people in more ways, she adds, over and above warnings sent to smartphones. ‘We can’t expect that will be the only warning system. Many people around the world don’t have [a smartphone], don’t use all its capabilities, or maybe they’re in an area that doesn’t get a signal as well.'”…

…”For Trivedi, habitability ultimately hinges on cooperation between people on many different levels – from local cultural decision-making to international policy changes. ‘Keeping areas habitable is a decision that has to be made not only in local city halls, but also in spaces like the United Nations.'”…
 
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How I Teach – Anthropology

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
FEATURED IN: UDaily — Tuesday, April 11, 2023
OVERVIEW: “How I Teach – Anthropology” featuring Dr. Kedron Thomas and speaking with Dr. Jennifer Trivedi. “An applied anthropologist, Trivedi said she wants her students — regardless of their class year or major — to learn the fundamentals of the discipline and, most importantly, how they can use that knowledge in their daily lives.”
 
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What Happened to Us

EXPERT: Valerie Marlowe
FEATURED IN: New York Times Magazine — Wednesday, February 22, 2023
OVERVIEW: Quoted in an article re: Columbia’s COVID-19 Oral History Project
 
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Covid Hazard Pay Has Ripple Effects in Today’s Overtime Cases

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
FEATURED IN: Bloomberg Law — Tuesday, July 26, 2022
OVERVIEW: Potential wage-and-hour liability exposure persists for employers that provided additional wages in response to the pandemic, even as Covid-19 hazard pay has mostly dried up. …
 
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Pushed by lawmakers and the formula shortage, FEMA boosts efforts to support breastfeeding families during disasters

EXPERT: Sarah E. DeYoung
FEATURED IN: The 19th — Monday, June 6, 2022
OVERVIEW: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) updated its website last week to make clear that breastfeeding resources are eligible for financial assistance for families affected by disasters – a message that’s all the more crucial as parents contend with a nationwide formula shortage. …
 
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As climate change worsens hurricane season in Louisiana, doulas are ensuring parents can safely feed their babies

EXPERT: Sarah E. DeYoung
FEATURED IN: The 19th — Thursday, May 5, 2022
OVERVIEW: When Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana in August 2020, over 10,500 residents from the southwestern part of the state fled their homes for New Orleans. A central evacuation resource hub where evacuees could go to find basic necessities like food, water and clothing was set up downtown. …
 
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Prediction of population behavior in hurricanes

EXPERT: Prosper Kosi Anyidoho
FEATURED IN: No longer available — Friday, April 1, 2022
OVERVIEW: My new publication on the “Prediction of population behavior in hurricanes”
 
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Regional county-level housing inventory predictions and the effects on hurricane risk

EXPERT: Caroline Williams
FEATURED IN: Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences — Wednesday, March 30, 2022
OVERVIEW: Regional hurricane risk is often assessed assuming a static housing inventory, yet a region’s housing inventory changes continually. Failing to include changes in the built environment in hurricane risk modeling can substantially underestimate expected losses. This study uses publicly available data and a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network model to forecast the annual number of housing units for each of 1000 individual counties in the southeastern United States over the next 20 years. …
 
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Here’s how disaster declarations work—and why aid takes so long

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
FEATURED IN: Southerly — Friday, February 18, 2022
OVERVIEW: Last year, 58 major natural disasters hit the United States. Twenty-one of those disasters caused $1 billion or more in damage, making 2021 the third costliest year for natural disasters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last year’s were also the deadliest since 2011. …
 
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How Bitcoin Adoption Could Bring Major Prosperity to Puerto Rico

EXPERT: Christopher Tharp
FEATURED IN: Bitcoin Magazine — Sunday, January 30, 2022
OVERVIEW: By 2017, I was peripherally aware of the existence of Bitcoin as an idea, though it remained unknown to me as a global phenomenon. I had yet to learn about Bitcoin as the antifragile and sovereign monetary system able to compete globally at scale with the U.S. dollar — as the political economic worldview grounded in anarcho-capitalist, “cypherpunk” philosophies of power, value, individual autonomy and mutualist community sovereignty. …
 
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Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Initial Assessment Report

EXPERT: Eileen Young
FEATURED IN: FEMA — Thursday, December 23, 2021
OVERVIEW: FEMA’s IAR reviews the first several months of the COVID-19 response. I helped in this as a contractor on the survey team, reviewing early surveys done in the regions, working with my supervisor to develop and conduct the FEMA-wide survey, and taking point on all the survey analytics. I also wrote the data callout on PDF page 70 of the IAR, but mostly I did the survey stuff. …
 
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Hurricane Ida destroyed affordable rental units, hundreds of families still can’t find new ones

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
FEATURED IN: The Philadelphia Inquirer — Thursday, December 9, 2021
OVERVIEW: “If you’re already in a precarious situation financially … that narrow slice of availability can get erased,” said Jennifer Trivedi, a faculty member at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center. …
 
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A Disastrous Book Collection: How a Tornado Inspired a Student’s Journey

EXPERT: Logan Gerber-Chavez
FEATURED IN: — Tuesday, November 16, 2021
OVERVIEW: First in a series of articles highlighting the winners of the third annual Seth Trotter Book Collecting Contest, sponsored by the Friends of the University of Delaware Library. Fourth-year doctoral student in the Disaster Science and Management Program at the University of Delaware, Logan Gerber-Chavez collection recounting stories of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, mining spills, climate change, toxic chemical exposure, pandemics and more. …
 
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