Daniel Aldrich

Japan’s nuclear waste dilemma: no prefecture wants Fukushima’s toxic soil By law, the waste currently housed near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant must be moved outside the prefecture by March 2045.

A house without a toilet; None of Japan’s prefectural governors are willing to accept soil collected in decontamination work near the disaster-hit #Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex without further safety information and support from the central government
www.scmp.com/news/asia/ea...

What Emergency Managers Say They Need More Than Ever We heard from more than 40 current and former emergency managers in 11 states about what they need to prepare for the next disaster — and what they aren’t getting.

Damaging our nation's preparedness: Trump's shuttering grant programs which fund salaries, upgrades to equipment and disaster-mitigation efforts, + drastically reducing reimbursement for local agencies responding to disasters undermines resilience
www.propublica.org/article/emer...

New #article from Maghelal et al: An empirical analysis of unwillingness to participate in flash flood hazard adjustments in mountain communities of North India
TL;DR: Respondents from the lowest income group were the only ones willing to move or relocate
www.emerald.com/ijdrbe/artic...

New #protocol from Touzel et al: Social prescribing for refugee populations: a protocol for a rapid realist review of international evidence
TL;DR: will identify and group families of interventions that function comparably and to develop program theories
www.frontiersin.org/journals/pub...

New #article from Kim et al: Resilience of a Net-zero Energy House to Winter Power Outages: Experimental Assessment of Energy Self-sufficiency and Thermal Comfort
TL;DR: Results inform ZEH design and operational strategies for residential energy resilience
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

East Asian countries vulnerable to Strait of Hormuz closing

Our new #article with Jaideep Visave: Comparative analysis of Community-Based wildfire management: A review of Australian approaches w implications for CA
TL;DR: Implementation hinges on regulatory recalibration, resource shifting, and institutional
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New #article from Liu et al: Combined benefits of multi-hazard early warnings on human mobility resilience to tropical cyclones
TL;DR: multi-level and multi-hazard warnings reduce exposure by 57% and recovery time by 56%.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New #article from Cuaton et al: Climate-related Planned Relocation as Domicide: The Multi-dimensional Destruction of Home in the Philippines
TL;DR: relocation often produces losses beyond physical displacement: hardship, cultural rupture, and fragmentation
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Happy to see our new #article with Dean Kyne and Dominic Kyei out: Development and Diffusion of the Social Capital Index (SoCI)
TL;DR: improve the SoCI’s ability to complement existing indicators and deepen understanding of relational capacity + resilience
www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/15...

China poised to earn vast profits from global energy transition: analysts Chinese firms are in pole position to benefit from a wave of investment in clean energy infrastructure that could be worth trillions of US dollars.

With China rolling out green technologies – from wind and solar power to electric cars and batteries – at a massive scale, its firms have the resources that other countries need to reduce their reliance on coal-fired power plants and gas-guzzling vehicles www.scmp.com/economy/chin...

To Extract Hot Water From the Earth, a Plan to Pipe It In First

Analysts say that this approach, known as “closed-loop” geothermal, has promise because building what resembles an enormous radiator could be done almost anywhere. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/b...

Former Harvard president Summers’ soft landing after Epstein revelations is case study of economics’ trouble with misbehaving men Despite repeated calls for the university to revoke his tenure, the economist held onto his teaching and academic appointments until he chose to retire.

By conferring this title on Summers, Harvard is signaling that powerful men can outlast gross misconduct with their honorifics intact theconversation.com/former-harva...

New #article from Cvetkovic et al: Predictive Model of Community Disaster Resilience Across Serbia: A BRIC–DROP Composite Index and Spatial Patterns
TL;DR: low preparedness and resilience, especially in risk communication, evacuation and shelter readiness
www.preprints.org/manuscript/2...

New #article from Wang and Li: Digital Empowerment of Rural Emergency Management Under the Rural Revitalization Strategy: Influencing Factors and Driving Pathways
TL;DR: the level of digital equipment in rescue teams and recovery capacity as core drivers
www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/14...

New #article from Ataee et al: Risk governance in urban planning: A comprehensive policy analysis in the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation Plan
TL;DR: Sustainable urban design and stakeholder engagement form core risk governance elements
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New #article from Santos-Obogne et al: From Participation to Outcomes: Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration in ALS Implementation
TL;DR: positive relationship between stakeholder engagement and collaboration
digi-journalphils.com/from-partici...

New #artilce from Xu et al: Research on the socio-spatial resilience evaluation and evolution of the central area of Chengdu
TL;DR: low social capital resilience in relevant social areas resulted from urban renewal that dismantled community networks
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Coal Power’s Comeback Isn’t Spurring New Investment President Trump and power-hungry AI data centers are giving the country’s waning coal industry a boost.

Zombie industry: the president and power-hungry AI data centers are giving the waning coal industry a boost, but it isn’t clear how long it will last www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Network analysis can provide useful insights for building resilience in social-ecological systems - Ambio Communities across the world need resilience to adapt to changing circumstances. In this paper, we blend focus group work and network analysis to assess adaptive capacities and potential resilience, i...

New #article from Doehring et al: Network analysis can provide useful insights for building resilience in social-ecological systems
TL;DR: significance of networks’ contributions to local resilience
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New #article from Wang et al: Digital Empowerment of Rural Emergency Management Under the Rural Revitalization Strategy: Driving Pathways
TL;DR: strengthening foundational resilience, enhancing coordinated dispatch, improving industrial recovery
www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/14...

New #article from Okuyama: Sustaining Disaster Risk Reduction in Shrinking Cities: Policy Evidence from Rikuzentakata, Japan
TL;DR: disaster-related policy must be reconceptualized as part of a broader policy portfolio.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New #article from Wang et al: Government Building Relocations and House Prices: Evidence from Shanghai, China
TL;DR: government building relocations lead to a 1–3% price increase relative to nearby control communities
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New #article from Kapayou, Young, and Ghimire: Building Resilience against Flash Floods: A Tale of Two Communities in Des Moines, Iowa, USA
TL;DR: resistance towards funded gray infrastructures and relocations that fracture neighborhoods after disasters.

New #article from Gong, Kong and Li: Better understanding flood resilience in rural china: a review integrating regional disaster systems and 4R theory
TL;DR: integrate static and dynamic perspectives, offering novel insights into the nature of resilience
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Japan Condemns Foreign Influence Operations After Reported China Attempt Japan’s top spokesperson condemned foreign influence operations, as alarm heightened after OpenAI reported a China-linked attempt to discredit Japan’s leader online.

Chinese attempts to use AI to attack Japan bring condemnation www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules are made public The Energy Department made the rules public a month after NPR reported about their existence. The rules slash requirements for security and environmental protections.

Trump increasing chance of nuclear accident: substantial changes undermine safety, security and environmental protections at the new reactors, slashing hundreds of pages of requirements for guards and securing nuclear material and protecting groundwater. www.npr.org/2026/02/26/n...

How a Close Associate of Epstein’s Found Career Redemption in Japan

After a disgraced exit from the top ranks of American tech and media circles, Joichi Ito, an entrepreneur who had deep ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein secured a 2nd act in Japan with the help of powerful allies in the Japanese government
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/b...

How to Build the World’s Most Expensive Nuclear Power Plant Plus, the $44,000 bill that shows California’s insurance-market dysfunction.

Britain’s first new nuclear plant in three decades cemented its status as the most expensive on record anywhere. The risk is that the U.K.’s contribution to the golden age is a cautionary tale about the cost of these megaprojects as the US pushes nuclear www.wsj.com/business/ene...