Building regulation for resilience: converting disaster experience into a safer built environment – the case of Japan

This report describes Japan’s incremental approach to developing, implementing, and facilitating compliance with building regulation over many decades. It explains Japan’s unique path to developing a policy and legal framework as well as compliance mechanisms that grow out of this framework and that function within Japan’s risk profile and climate, culture, and construction practices. Although Japan is well known for its advanced engineering knowledge and for employing engineering solutions in disaster risk management, it also relies on non-technical approaches and has created a legal and quality management ecosystem for buildings within which those technical solutions can be successful…

Record Heat Means Hurricanes Gain Ferocity Faster

Hurricanes are becoming more violent, more rapidly, than they did 30 years ago. The cause may be entirely natural, scientists say.

But Hurricane Harvey, which in 2017 assaulted the Gulf of Mexico and dumped unprecedented quantities of rain to cause devastating floods in Texas, happened because the waters of the Gulf were warmer than at any time on record. And they were warmer because of human-driven climate change, according to a second study.

Both studies examine the intricate machinery of a natural phenomenon, the tropical cyclone. Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory looked at how fast four of 2017’s hurricanes—Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria—intensified: episodes in which maximum wind speed rose by at least 25 knots, which…