Flooding in Colorado

Evidence of severe weather is everywhere these days, even at a place that studies disasters.  The University of Boulder has the Natural Hazards Center dedicated to researching disasters and using physical and social sciences to help emergency managers better understand risks and how best to mitigate, prepared for, respond to and recover from disasters.  

 

Every year in July there is a Natural Hazards Workshop that brings people together from all over the United States and the world.  I recall attending one of these and going down to Boulder Creek where they have a monument to Gilbert F. White the father of modern flood mitigation and policy.  The monument is in the right hand corner of the photo below.

 

I participated in a webinar on Wednesday where it was mentioned that researchers believe that the weather related disasters that are becoming much more common place are linked to warmer global temperatures.  If so, emergency management is really going to be a growth industry in the coming years.

 

You can count on the Boulder flood being on the agenda for the 2014 workshop.