Background Briefing: September 29, 2022
Hurricane Ian’s Path of Destruction and the Need To Update Building Codes
We begin with an update on the devastating category 4 Hurricane Ian that hit the west coast of Florida yesterday and is leaving a trail of destruction and flooding as it heads east across the peninsula to then revive its strength over the Atlantic heading north for the Carolinas. Joining us is Claire Connolly Knox, a Professor and the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program Director in University of Central Florida’s School of Public Administration. She teaches Disaster Response and Recovery, Environmental Planning, and Environmental Policy and Management courses. Her dissertation on the Florida Everglades ecosystem focused on the newly-designated northern Everglades that encompass the lands and waters in the central Florida region. We discuss the need to upgrade building codes that were improved after Hurricane Andrew but now after record storm surges and rainfall are proving to be inadequate as more powerful hurricanes caused by climate change are becoming the new normal.
Today’s First Pacific Islands Summit at the White House as China Makes Inroads Into the Region
Then we look into today’s first Pacific Islands summit at the White House spurred by inroads into the region made by China, and speak with Cleo Paskal, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies focusing on the Indo-Pacific region and the strategic implications of the intersection of geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geophysical change. She has briefed government departments of the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, India and many others and she is the author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map.