Bracing For Disaster

“The first history of seismic engineering in San Francisco . . . spiced with survivor and eyewitness accounts. ”—Midwest Book Review For the past one hundred and fifty years, architects and engineers have quietly been learning from each quake and designing newer earthquake-resistant building techniques and applying them in an ongoing effort to save San Francisco. Bracing for Disaster is a fresh appraisal of a city responding to repeated devastation. In the language of a skilled teacher, Tobriner examines what really happened during the city’s earthquakes—which buildings were damaged, which survived, and who were the unsung heroes. Filled with more than two hundred photographs, diagrams, and illustrations, this is a revealing look at the history of buildings by a true expert, and it offers lessons not just for San Francisco but for any city beset by natural disasters. “The real saga is how a fast-growing city grapples with the reality that it has more to worry about than fires and fog. The core of the story is fairly technical, rooted in the crude intuitive ways in which builders reacted to a seismic threat they could neither measure nor define. But Tobriner crafts the story well.”—SFGate

An emotional and practical guide to handling life with mental illness. Half of each chapter deals with the patient's new identity, using a modified Twelve-Step plan. Half is nuts and bolts: how to work with your doctor; how to navigate your way through uncaring bureaucracies; dealing with psychosis; surviving suicidal thoughts; recognizing your triggers; and more. PRAISE FROM REVIEWERS: "Four Stars out of five...Fruchey effectively adapts the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, applying them to the challenges of living with mental illness. Fruchey's sensitivity to differences in opinion and life situations will help make the book pertinent to a wide range of people. Although it targets mentally ill readers, this book will also benefit relatives and friends and help mental health professionals better understand their patients. Overall, it provides practicable, well-presented information." - Foreword Clarion Review "Guides the reader toward recovery by beginning with the most basic step - accepting that you have a mental illness - to the last step: finding your purpose in life beyond your mental illness. She provides helpful advice while including stories and quotations from people dealing with various issues. She collaborates with Dr. David Kallinger, whose PhD adds clinical expertise...together, they offer a therapeutic map to guide the reader toward a better quality of life." - NAMI Advocate PRAISE FROM EARLY READERS: "Something that is so valuable, a compilation of personal experience, personal advice, and Twelve-Step guidance that offers real, effective ideas for dealing with the garbage that goes with mental illness... I LOVE this, I'm looking forward to having a copy of it, and these last three chapters I'm going to sit and read with my husband." (Kathy D) "Room For Me, Too, is bravely honest and heartfelt. I have read a lot of non-fiction and this is the first time I would call a book a true work of humanity. The interviews are the most complete and caring I have ever seen before. Even the religious parts were a huge breath of fresh air... None of us are without issues, and I can't think of anyone who wouldn't benefit greatly from this book. This book was intended for those with mental illnesses of various types, but I say it's a must read for those who know anyone with such problems." (Leslie D) "I wish I had read this in my younger life ...This is so informational and entertaining to read - I feel like I have a guide through life's difficulties when I read this." (Erika D)

No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.

"From 1970 to 2000, 68 percent of United States naval operations were categorized as Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR). These relief efforts identified a need for deployable, lightweight structures, capable of sheltering a large area. Large-span shelters are necessary in HA/DR because they provide space for community gathering, emergency services, educational facilities, and worship. Field work in Athens, Greece and input from external collaborators confirmed that this need is not only physical, but is both culturally and emotionally significant. Gridshells are a potential solution to this need because of their portability, sustainability, and efficiency. Formed from flat, linear members bent on-site into a curved surface, gridshells are relatively large structures that can be built without the use of heavy machinery. To broaden the use of gridshells, this paper quantifies the effect of asymmetric loading and bracing on their performance, as both are likely occurrences in HA/DR. The design requirements and constraints for the gridshell were established in Athens, Greece and with international building codes. The structural analysis included a parametric study that assessed the effect of the grid density, bracing patterns, and load cases (gravity, asymmetric, and point loads) on the failure load. These results, along with the design constraints, governed the design of the HA/DR gridshell. The results generated from this analysis will contribute to the overall design space of gridshells, specifically regarding the effects of bracing and the impact of asymmetric loads. This knowledge will broaden the design space by illustrating relationships between physical parameters and structural performance. The constructability was evaluated with small-scale models and a half-scale prototype. Having verified the structural performance, deployment mechanisms, storage schemes, and joint movements, gridshells were proven to be solutions that meet the distinct needs in HA/DR efforts."--from abstract.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.