The New Orleans Index at Five

Brookings Institution / by Amy Liu and Allison Plyer http://tinyurl.com/2euno4l Five years following Hurricane Katrina—a tragedy compounded and made more complex by the Great Recession and the current Gulf oil spill—new evidence shows that greater New Orleans is emerging as a healthier, more resilient region. Yet, this year’s New Orleans Index at Five, which combines [...]

Hurricane Katrina: The Five Year Anniversary

Insurance Information Institute / by Robert P. Hartwig and Claire Wilkinson http://www.iii.org/assets/docs/pdf/1007Katrina5Anniversary.pdf …Five years later, Hurricane Katrina remains the largest single loss event in the history of the global insurance industry, causing an estimated $41.1 billion in insured damage ($45.1 billion in 2009 dollars) and 1.7 million claims across six states. Louisiana and Mississippi were [...]

Charging Ahead: Battery Electric Vehicles and the Transformation of an Industry

Deloitte Development LLC / By Lei Zhou, Jeffrey W. Watts, Masato Sase and Atsuyuki Miyata http://tinyurl.com/26v9bde …Environmental sensitivities have begun to drive demand for an alternative to the conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.1 Among the front-runner technologies: the Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), a zero-emission vehicle. Because BEVs consume electricity, replacing ICE cars with BEVs [...]

Search and Rescue Five Years Later: Saving People Still Trapped in Katrina’s Ruins

Unity Abandoned Buildings Outreach Team http://unitygno.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/UNITY_AB-Report_August2010.pdf The Abandoned Buildings Outreach Team of UNITY of Greater New Orleans has released a detailed report of the Team’s findings and recommendations from 18 months of combing the city’s abandoned buildings in search of elderly and disabled survivors of Hurricane Katrina, “Search and Rescue Five Years Later: Saving People [...]

Hurricane Katrinia: Are We Better Prepared Five Years Later?

Institute for Business and Home Safety / by Wanda Edwards, P.E. and Candace J. Iskowitz http://disastersafety.org/resource/resmgr/PDFs/HUR_081710_katrina-anniversa.pdf In recognition of the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Institute for Business & Home safety (IBHs) analyzed the quality of building codes in place along the Gulf Coast before and after the storm. While there have been positive [...]

Modern Energy Access to All in Rural India: An Integrated Implementation Strategy

Belfer Center, Kennedy School, Harvard Univ. / by Balachandra Patil http://tinyurl.com/2dnyzk9 Expanding energy access to the rural population of India presents a critical challenge for its government. The presence of about 364 million people without access to electricity and about 726 million who rely on biomass for cooking indicate both the failure of past policies [...]

Renewable Energy Annual 2008

US DOE, Energy Information Admin. http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/rea_data/rea.pdf?src=email The Renewable Energy Annual (2008) is the fourteenth in a series of annual publications on renewable energy by the U.S.  Energy Information Administration (EIA). The 2008 edition presents five chapters, accompanied with data tables, text and graphics covering various aspects of the renewable energy marketplace: • Renewable Energy Trends [...]

The Economic Impact of Karnal Bunt Phytosanitary Wheat Export Certificates

USDA Economic Research Service / By Gary Vocke, Edward W. Allen, and J. Michael Price http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/WHS/2010/08Aug/WHS10H01/#2010-8-25 This report provides the results of ERS research on the economic consequences of ending the USDA Karnal bunt certification program for U.S. exports to countries that ban import of wheat from countries known to have the disease. USDA currently [...]

Onshore Oil and Gas: BLM’s Management of Public Protests to Its Lease Sales Needs Improvement

Government Accountability Office http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-670?source=ra The development of oil and natural gas resources on federal lands contributes to domestic energy production but also results in concerns over potential impacts on those lands. Numerous public protests about oil and gas lease sales have been filed with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages these federal resources. [...]

Hurricane Recovery: Federal Government Provided a Range of Assistance to Nonprofits following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

Government Accountability Office http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-800?source=ra Residents of the Gulf Coast continue to struggle to recover almost 5 years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the area in August and September of 2005. In many cases the federal government coordinates with, and provides support to, nonprofit organizations in order to deliver recovery assistance to impacted residents. A [...]