Knowledge Base highlights and editors' picks

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Every week the PreventionWeb team of editors selects the latest news and research, reports and publications on disaster risk reduction – here is their selection of the latest must-read content.

People walk along the road because the road has been washed away by torrential rain causing flooding and road collapse.

Research briefs

11 July 2023

Adding snow to estimates of spring flooding

A PNNL scheme to improve small-scale hydrologic infrastructure helps pinpoint local flood risks.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Update

11 July 2023

Climate change is making travel that much harder

The design of most of our transportation infrastructure was based on the climate of the mid-20th century. As climate change continues to warm the planet and make weather more extreme, much of that infrastructure will become less safe and reliable.

Columbia Climate School

An Asian women harvesting crops in the middle of a field.

Update

11 July 2023

Climate change threatens to cause ‘synchronised harvest failures’ across the globe, with implications for Australia’s food security

New research shows scientists have underestimated the climate risk to agriculture and global food production.

Conversation Media Group, the

Update

11 July 2023

Chad’s economic recovery: navigating challenges and building resilience to floods?

Chad’s GDP growth was modest due to the impact of floods and a volatile security environment, which hindered the expected recovery.

World Bank, the

People sitting outside during the UK heatwave

Research briefs

10 July 2023

Record-breaking heat in the summer of 2022 caused more than 61,000 deaths in Europe

An epidemiological analysis published in Nature Medicine estimates that 63% more women than men died due to heat, with the highest incidence in the Mediterranean region

ISGlobal

Research briefs

11 July 2023

Addressing justice in wildfire risk management

A new article calls for more integrated and inclusive wildfire risk management approaches and proposes a novel framework mapping different justice aspects.

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Research briefs

7 July 2023

More extreme-heat occurrences related to humidity in China

Against the background of global warming, significant increasing trends in the frequency of such extreme events are captured nationwide, but with much stronger trends detected in northern and western China .

Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Documents and publications

10 July 2023

Scientific evidence supports UN security council engagement with climate change

This brief shows that scientific literature offers ample evidence that climate change can constitute a real threat to international peace and security.

Skyline of Santiago de Chile during sunrise. View of the city and the mountains in the background.

Update

7 July 2023

How four cities are building resilience to extreme heat

The world broke the record for the hottest day ever this week—twice. On July 3, the average global temperature hit 17.01°C (62.62°F), exceeding the August 2016 record of 16.92°C (62.46°F). Then, on July 4, it rose to 17.18°C (62.92°F).

Atlantic Council

Landscape of a aerial view of a pathway in the wood.

Update

6 July 2023

Nigerians experiment with wildfire prevention methods

Francis Onabe still remembers the event of 22 March, 2020 vividly. That day, bush fire set by a farmer escalated and spread to his farmland, destroying all his crops in Olum, his community in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River State.

Fair Planet