Disasters: Recipes and Remedies the journal from the seventeenth Social Research conference at The New School is finally available. I attended the event in November 2007, and the overall scope of the events, average level of all participants, and topics raised, was surprisingly high and motivating. The journal was set to be available in the fall of 2008 but was set slightly to this time. However most topics, analysis and outlook of the material remains highly relevant. I'd strongly recommend reaching out for a copy. Pay links to individual articles or to order full volume are at the Social Research journal page. Here is their content overview:

"Chainbreaker Bike Book" is not only a great roughguide to bycicle maintenance, but is also a nice effort to recuperate and share part of the culture that disasters, like hurricane Katrina in this case, threaten to destroy. Here's a quick review:

Going over the notion of subtle urban interventions, it might be interesting to look quickly at two examples related to public communications and safety. They show very different ways and messages employed by two municipalities in the stickers attached to their traffic signage.

The transition to digital television is legislated on the United States primarily as a need to improve public safety communications. But it would seem that other countries, such as Spain set to have a full transition by 2010 or the Netherlands fulfilling a 2006 mandate, barely touch on the notion of security and emergency communications, and instead advocate for a transition that will provide better entertainment, and a diversity of stations and services for which business are already competing. Not only the rhetoric about public safety seems sketchy at best, but if in fact that is a critical aspect of the analog blackout it would seem that things are not fully worked out, or adequately communicated to the public.

The BBC has a small, simple, and nice animated guide to some natural disasters. It includes tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. It also offers non-animated versions of them, thus facilitating its accessibility for the visually impaired and low bandwidths.

Back after a long hiatus: projects, trips, family... I was mulling over maybe talking about how close I came from being stranded in Madrid, part of a small snow crisis, and the local preparedness ramblings around preparedness, and the predominant political finger pointing around the emergency. But I can´t help to be mesmerized coming back "home" to Washington DC, and noticing that the inauguration of President Elect Barack Obama has triggered the declaration of a Federal State of Emergency in the city.

The role that social media has played in the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks raises again a trite mixed bag of stereotypes, misguided commentary, and exciting potential. While sorting out through these elements is the key challenge, both during an actual event and in the ensuing analysis, there are essential aspects worth remembering and clarifying as we look at some aspects of the conversation developing around its use.

The minor local polemic around the advertisement depicting a post-apocalyptic Washington DC in its metro system, highlights some of the cultural mechanism to suppress risk awareness, the role of the representation of disasters, and how this stimulus could be used to trigger a meaningful debate around the likelihood of a crisis and our understanding of such a possibility.

Food security is another heavy gorilla in the room. The common cultural and marketing cycle of elections in the USA is rendering invisible such an essential issue. Hopefully this will not be the case for long: Food security is one of the most important issues we are facing in order to lessen a crisis we are already into, but a crisis that has been blatantly ignored. It constitutes a paradigm of "soft disasters", i.e. disasters that by its steady and consistent effect avoid the noise of catastrophic peak events but that often embody the most severe and difficult challenges we face. In a USA election where I fear most policy substance is lacking, I have just caught up with a panel from the University of California to look into "A Food Agenda for the Next Administration" with stimulating, much needed, and critically urgent actions.