Author Archives: Jon

Inhabitat: portable light via solar panels and LEDS

From Inhabitat:

Designed by Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA MATx), the beauty of the Portable Light Project is its merging of high-tech industry and local craft-based economies, not to mention the fact that it delivers usable light to demographics and regions that are either off-the-grid, mobile, or in locations with little daily sunlight. “Portable Light is based upon the principle that global needs for technology development are inevitably interconnected. Knowledge, techniques, market solutions and data produced by the project benefit the “third” world and the “first” world where the need to imagine, design and develop energy efficient alternatives to the centralized and increasingly costly electrical grid is becoming ever more important,” says KVA.

The materials themselves and attention to the design process prove that Portable Light is not just functional, but thoughtfully constructed with sustainability and humanity in mind. It combines high-brightness LEDs from pedestrian walk signals, water-resistant tactile switches from dishwashers, and rechargeable batteries from the cell-phone industry, all sourced from consumer appliances and standard technologies. Continue reading →

TOPOFF 2007: 2005 after-action report still not made public

According to Ellen Sullivan’s Associated Press piece , published on Firehouse.com

The nation is preparing for its biggest terrorism exercise ever later this month when three fictional “dirty bombs” go off and cripple transportation arteries in two major U.S. cities and Guam, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

Yet even as this drill begins, details from the previous national exercise held in 2005 have yet to be publicly released – information that’s supposed to help officials prepare for the next real attack.

Continue reading →

addition to blogroll – Brad’s Sketchpad

Just came across the very clever blog, Brad’s Sketchpad,  which is not  connected to the  excellent  actor Brad Dourif, the funny Brad Garrett , or the city Brad, which is located in Romania.

It belongs to Brad Stone, a technology writer for the Times, my hometown paper. And he seems to be channeling Gary Larsen, the Far Side cartoonist. Or so it appears; my understanding was that the Times had a rule against cartoonists appearing in the newsroom, often misunderstood simply as a reluctance to publish Doonesbury or other cartoons. So maybe he’s just swiped the real Brad Stone’s identity. If so, watch the Times’ tech blog, Bits , for an interesting series on identity theft.

Not me, though. If I were going to be impersonating someone at the Times – and I could pull it off – Maureen Dowd. The Popular Logistics Board of Estimates has concluded that she’s probably having more fun than anyone else there. Like Rosalind Russell but without the hats.

London gets hybrid double-decker buses

From Inhabitat:


As part of the Mayor of London’s plan for an increased reliance on energy efficient vehicles to power the city’s transport infrastructure, Transport for London, the British agency responsible for public transportation, has introduced one hybrid bus across route 141. The current hybrid bus is powered by a hybrid diesel-electric engine. Thanks to the mixture of both systems, the bus is able to cover the same distance range as a conventional diesel bus. All the hybrid buses will be marked with a leafy insignia to better communicate to the passengers that they are indeed traveling on an environmentally friendly bus. Here’s hoping that the rest of London, and other cities in the world follow this lead.

“This is a world-first for London marking our commitment to a cleaner, greener public transport network.” said Mayor Ken Livigstone.

Link to Inhadbitat post here.

Transport for London release here.

"Bring Your Own Everything" – Huntsville, Alabama establishing emergency shelters – just barely

Huntsville is setting up a shelter system – although there are no plans to provide food or bedding. What about light and heat? Medical care?

From Jay Reeves’ Associated Press article:

In an age of al-Qaida, sleeper cells and the threat of nuclear terrorism, Huntsville is dusting off its Cold War manual to create the nation’s most ambitious fallout-shelter plan, featuring an abandoned mine big enough for 20,000 people to take cover underground.

Continue reading →

Avian influenza: China bans Canadian poultry, lifts ban on Brazilian poultry

From Paul Rega at Project Disaster , original dispatch from Xinhua News Agency:

China has ordered all poultry imports and relative products shipped from Canada after September 23 to be returned or destroyed to ward off the H7N3 avian influenza virus.The decision jointly made by the Ministry of Agriculture and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine came two days after the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) released an outbreak alert, saying that the highly pathogenic virus has been confirmed in a chicken broiler breeder flock in Saskatchewan.The Paris-based international organization warned that approximately 540 roosters have died in one barn containing approximately 600 birds. Another 49,100 roosters and broiler breeders held in other nine barns nearby are susceptible.

To remedy the situation, China has imposed an import ban on all poultry and relative products from Canada and required relevant local governmental departments to seal up all Canadian poultry and relative products carried by airplanes, ships or trains from abroad that must stop over in or transit China.

Illegal poultry imports from Canada must be destroyed under the supervision of entry-exit inspection and quarantine departments.

China has decided to restore as of Sunday the imports of animals with cloven hooves and relative products from Santa Catarina, Acre and the cities of Rio Grande do Sul and Rondonia of Amazon in Brazil as these regions have been confirmed by the OIE as free from the foot-and-mouth disease.

Link to post.

OEM holds post-disaster (housing) design competition

From Commissioner Joseph Bruno’s announcement:

What if New York City were hit by a Category 3 Hurricane?

In New York City, over eight million people live on land that has 578 miles of waterfront. By 2030, the population is expected to reach nine million. At the same time, global climate change has put New York City at an increased risk for a severe coastal storm. In recent years, storms have become more intense, occur more frequently, and continue farther north than they have historically. The city would face many challenges during and after such a storm; one of the most difficult is the possibility that hundreds of thousands of people could lose their homes.

With financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation and in consultation with Architecture for Humanity-New York, the New York City Office of Emergency Management is sponsoring an open competition to generate solutions for post-disaster provisional housing. “What if New York City…” is a call for innovation and an opportunity for designers and policy-makers to collaborate on one of the biggest challenges facing densely settled urban areas after a disaster: how do we keep people safely and comfortably housed while reconstruction proceeds?

A jury of experts in the fields of architecture, design, urbanism, and government will choose ten entrants who will be awarded $10,000 each and technical support to develop their proposals into workable solutions. These solutions will provide support for New York’s most vulnerable communities and be a precedent for dense urban areas all over the world.

This design competition will rely on a fictional but realistic New York City neighborhood devastated by a hypothetical Category 3 hurricane.

Competition main page here.

Japan getting serious about Kyoto

NPR’s David Kestenbaum has been doing a series on Morning Edition about Japanese effort to keep up with the Kyoto Protocols

This morning’s piece is about internal temperatures; men in certain government ministries have actually stopped wearing ties to work.

Here’s yesterday’s piece; we’ll post a link to today’s piece- about office temperatures, and clothing, today when NPR posts its links.  Kestenbaum points out in today’s piece that this inititative adds up to only one-tenth of one percent of Japan’s Kyoto targets. On the other hand, 999 other efforts would make 100%. And efforts that make you physically aware, all day – may have persuasive value greater than that of less-visible schemes.

Portable solar panels developed for Australian Troops

The Daily Mail reports that the Australian Ministry of Defence has developed a 14-ounce solar panel:

Soldiers will have them moulded on to their backpacks to help power the array of electronic equipment now used in combat.

The introduction of solar panels is being studied by the Ministry of Defence, which is keen to cut the use of traditional batteries. The new technology would be ‘greener’ than disposable batteries and much cheaper in the long run.

It could also help save troops’ lives by eliminating the danger of equipment failing because of lack of power.

And it could save them from the risk of injury posed by traditional batteries, which can explode if exposed to fire or extreme desert temperatures.

Weighing just 14oz, the panels have been developed for the Australian army, whose troops and special forces regularly fight alongside elite British SAS units in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The panels are made from a secret compound and can produce hours of low-level energy to power radios, night-vision goggles, communications equipment and sensors to detect enemy positions.

They even work in cloudy conditions because they harness solar radiation rather than direct sunlight. The Australian military, which spent £1million on the project, says the battlefield has become more “power hungry”, so finding an alternative battery source was vital.

Lieutenant Colonel John Baird, of the Australian army, said: “This is fighting in the information age, where every soldier is connected via sophisticated communications equipment and uses sensors to provide information on an enemy’s position.

“But it uses a hell of a lot of power, and the disposable batteries we are using now are far from ideal because when they run out the soldiers have to return to base and take the used batteries with them.

“If we can use the sun’s radiation to recharge equipment then that is a clear advantage.”

Dr Gavin Tulloch, director of the solar-panel project, said: “The lithium used in traditional batteries can be dangerous, particularly in conflict situations, and the residual electrolytes are quite polluting.

Clearly within the ambit of current technological possibility. And this became, say, NATO-standard equipment, we might see interesting and rapid changes in price.

Daily Mail article here.

Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security

Christopher Cooper and Robert Block’s book Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security is essential:

If, after four years and billions of dollars spent on preparedness, Homeland Security can’t handle a hurricane, it is likely to struggle when faced with any manner of other disasters. The preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina should disturb all Americans. If New Orleans is vulnerable, so are we all.

….

From the very start, FEMA’s bureaucratic brass had trouble integrating all of these subdepartments, with their starkly different cultures, into one cohesive federal agency. President Carter did his best to work out the problem by appointing John Macy as FEMA’s first director. A career bureaucrat with a knack for organization, Macy attempted to unite the various fiefs behind a common philosophy that all disasters – by they unseen or expected, extraordinary or run-of-the-mill – demanded the same response from Washington. He developed what he called the “Integrated Emergency Management System,” which people now refer to as the “all-hazards approach” to disaster preparedness. It is a simple concept, rooted in the assumption that many response tools such as warnings, evacuations, and damage assessments are equally applicable across the universe of disasters.

More from Cooper and Block in the near future.

See also: FEMA (Wikipedia)