Media Watch Archives

One recent study of flood exposure in Los Angeles suggests that the population exposed to dangerous flooding, or a flooding event with 1 percent annual probability, is between 10 and 40 times greater than US government maps show. … The numbers of at-risk Angelenos surprised even the researchers …. said Brett Sanders, [professor and] director of the Flood Lab at the University of California, Irvine. … Already, the maps are leaving their mark on Los Angeles. Following the study’s publication, the County Board of Supervisors passed a motion directing the city’s public works department to develop a plan to address flood risks and inequities, while improving the city’s water conservation and drought measures. It’s an “impact that you could only dream of,” says Sanders, “seeing your work immediately register with leaders who say we need to act on this problem.” Read More

Using a new flood modeling and mapping method named PRIMo (Parallel Raster Inundation Model) to show in nearly house-by-house detail the impact of a 100-year flood, the study found existing assessments to be wildly inaccurate and the aging waterway control system to be woefully inadequate for coping with a massive deluge. "We knew the paper would get some attention because we're saying that the number of people at risk is 30 times greater than the federally defined flood plains would suggest," says lead author Brett Sanders, UC Irvine professor of civil and environmental engineering. "On top of that, we identified glaring racial and economic inequalities in the flooding risks that residents face. … Sanders' co-authors include fellow Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty [and Professor] Amir AghaKouchak, along with research specialist Jochen Schubert and grad student Daniel Kahl; [Professor] Steven J. Davis of the Department of Earth System Science; [Professor] Richard A. Matthew and [Assistant Professor] Nicola Ulibarri of the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy; and researchers from UC Riverside, UC San Diego and the University of Miami. Read More

DWP is hardly the only Californian institution rushing to commit to hydrogen. SoCalGas, one of the state’s largest natural gas utilities, hopes to blend hydrogen into the gas network that supplies homes and businesses across Southern California. To do that, it has begun work on a massive hydrogen pipeline project called the Angeles Link, and is planning tests in campus buildings at UC Irvine. Meanwhile, a Bay Area transit agency is preparing to manufacture hydrogen to power a new train line linking Alameda and San Joaquin counties. Read More

"In general, there's two ways you can achieve transparency," UC Irvine's Alon Gorodetsky, associate professor, chemical & biomolecular engineering], who has been fascinated by squid camouflage for the last decade or so, said during a media briefing at the ACS meeting. "One way is by reducing how much light is absorbed—pigment-based coloration, typically. Another way is by changing how light is scattered, typically by modifying differences in the refractive index." The latter is the focus of his lab's research. Read More