Modernizing, better funding, and expanding wildland firefighting forces in North America won't make fires or smoke magically disappear. A massive paradigm shift is necessary. But it's clear something needs to happen immediately too.
From anticipating the Space Age in the 1940s to studying gun policy and COVID-19 responses in the 2020s, RAND is celebrating 75 years of research that has made a difference.
A 2015 landslide that killed three people in Sitka, Alaska, changed how residents looked at the steep hills all around them. The community worked with researchers to develop a warning system to prevent such tragedies in the future.
This weekly recap focuses on the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, regulating the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement, improving data collection on gun violence, and more.
Thousands of people have been confirmed dead in one the strongest earthquakes to hit Turkey and Syria in the past century. As search-and-rescue missions ended and recovery began, a handful of RAND researchers shared some of their initial thoughts.
It turned out to be a system failure that grounded thousands of flights on January 11, but U.S. critical infrastructure faces a range of threats—from Russian hackers, to weather events, to angry individuals with guns. The government and organizations responsible for critical infrastructure can take steps to actively manage these risks.
When Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico on September 18, electricity went out across the island. It was a reminder that recovery from 2017's Hurricane Maria is far from complete. RAND researchers discuss the difficulties Puerto Rico is still facing.
Vaccine rollouts, an attack on the U.S. Capitol, massive ransomware attacks, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, record numbers of job openings and people quitting, and more. RAND researchers weighed in on all these topics and more.
Building back better means focusing on recovery that not only restores damage from a disaster but also reduces future risk. To meet that goal today, we need to look at the ways our disaster preparedness and response systems actually create risk themselves, by reinforcing things like wealth inequality, systemic discrimination, or access to crucial services.
Environmental policy experts Jaime Madrigano and Benjamin Preston are leading an effort to highlight how discriminatory policies have shaped environmental health disparities. Their goal: create an interactive map of the United States to motivate environmental policy that advances antiracism.
The fire seasons that have been scorching huge areas and wiping entire towns from the map appear to be the future. Accepting that wildland fires are a part of our environment and working to live with fires rather than continuously fighting against them may be the most responsible path forward.
This weekly recap focuses on the link between historic lynchings and voter registration, Afghanistan in the era of fentanyl, supporting firefighters’ mental health, and more.
Increasingly intense fire seasons are taking a physical and mental toll on wildland firefighters. Without more direct attention paid to firefighters' mental health, burnout could decimate the ranks of those who protect lives and property across the West.
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, it peeled roofs from houses, turned roads into rivers, and left millions of people without electricity or safe drinking water. Marielena Lara, a senior physician policy researcher at RAND, was grateful to be part of the recovery planning.
