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The New York TImes

Half Their Land Burned in a Decade: The California Counties Constantly on Fire

The New York Times -
Over the past decade, most California counties have seen double the area burned compared with the area burned in the previous decade. … It’s not necessarily the case that more large fires are burning now than in previous decades, but the ones that do ignite are charring through much more land, according to Tirtha Banerjee, a professor and wildfire researcher at the University of California, Irvine. “What that says to me is that fires are getting more intense and more severe, and behaving in more unexpected ways,” he said. Read More

STEM Tea | How to lead a lab

BioTechniques -
In this episode of STEM Tea, host AJ Hinton is joined by Quinton Smith, an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine (CA, USA). Here, Quinton discusses his journey into academia, his lab’s research and how he balances life with work, blocking out time to look after his mental health. Read More
LAist

New flood modeling in LA

LAist -
Researchers out of UC Irvine say nationally used flood modeling lacks specificity when it comes to measuring risks in urban areas like Los Angeles County. They've created their own modeling system, PRIMo-Drain, that can better predict which properties are at risk when using accurate, granular data. … In a new report, UCI engineering professor Brett Sanders and his team compared widely used national flood risk assessment modeling in areas like Los Angeles County against their own PRIMo-Drain model. … “Once we have this relatively detailed representation of the land surface, of the flood infrastructure, we look at different types of flooding,” Sanders said. Read More
Bloomberg

The Risky Business of Predicting Where Climate Disaster Will Hit

Bloomberg -
“If you see a flood model, how much confidence can you have in the information?” asks Brett Sanders, a civil and environmental engineering professor at [UC] Irvine and a co-author of the study. He and his colleagues sought “to reveal there are significant differences in models trying to characterize the same thing.” Read More

A fifth of U.S. green hydrogen projects eyed for water-stressed areas

Louisiana Illuminator -
The total water use of hydrogen “is not the big deal,” said Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor at University of California-Irvine. “The water challenge is that where we have good primary energy from wind and solar, we do not have good water (supply) necessarily.”... Companies and governments in arid places like California will eventually need to invest more in power lines or water pipelines to connect sunny areas to water resources for green hydrogen production, said UC-Irvine’s Brouwer, who is also part of the ARCHES leadership team.  “We run a wire from the good solar to where the water is,” he said. Read More

Nationwide flood models poorly capture risks to households and properties

Insurance Newsnet -
In a paper published recently in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth’s Future, experts in UC Irvine’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering caution that relatively new, nation-scale flood data provides an inadequate representation of local topography and infrastructure, factors known to control the spread of floods in urban areas. “In our analysis of Los Angeles County…we found that estimates of countywide flood exposure from the nationwide data are actually similar to what we find with our more detailed models. However, predictions of which communities and properties are at risk are markedly different,” said lead author Brett Sanders, UC Irvine Chancellor’s Professor of civil and environmental engineering and professor of urban planning and public policy. Read More

How the Bay Area will contribute to California’s new ‘hydrogen hub’

Silicon Valley.com - The Mercury News -
To reduce reliance on fossil fuels in industries where electricity is impractical, unreliable or too expensive, California is building a massive “hydrogen hub” to generate a steady supply of an alternative fuel with no carbon emissions — bringing us closer, say advocates, to a completely green future. “It’s the beginning of the investment that must be made if we are to meet our zero-emission policy goals,” said UC Irvine engineering professor Jack Brouwer, director of the university’s Clean Energy Institute and an interim director for business development on the hub’s leadership team. Read More

Nationwide flood models poorly capture risks to households and properties

NewsGram -
“In our analysis of Los Angeles County, which has a population greater than 40 U.S. states and includes over 80 separate municipalities, we found that estimates of countywide flood exposure from the nationwide data are actually similar to what we find with our more detailed models. However, predictions of which communities and properties are at risk are markedly different,” said lead author Brett Sanders, UC Irvine Chancellor’s Professor of civil and environmental engineering and professor of urban planning and public policy. Read More

Researchers enhance tool to better predict where, when wildfires will occur

Chronicle and Chief -
The Fire Program Analysis Fire-Occurrence Database was developed in 2013 by the U.S. Forest Service and since been updated five times. It incorporates basic information such as ignition location, discovery date and final wildfire size. The revised database now includes many new environmental and social factors, such as topography and vegetation, social vulnerability and economic justice metrics, and practical attributes such as the distance from the ignition to the nearest road. … Other co-authors of the paper are … Amir AghaKouchak, University of California, Irvine. Read More

The business of beaches: leaders gather to discuss impacts of a disappearing coast

The Orange County Register -
A group gathered at the UC Irvine one recent day to discuss the “Business of Beaches,” drawing politicians, planners, educators and economic experts to brainstorm ideas to tackle a problem — the shrinking supply of sand that makes up much of the region’s beaches — that could have a domino of disastrous impacts. … While there’s much talk about climate change and the role sea level rise will have in threatening the coastline, the problem is rooted in poor infrastructure design dating back decades — and it can be fixed, according to Brett Sanders, professor of civil and environmental engineering, urban planning and public policy at UC Irvine. Read More

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