Disasters

At disaster sites, it's not uncommon for both the water supply and electrical grid to be out of commission. That's where a new system may someday come in, as it utilizes just a small amount of electricity to desalinate seawater for drinking.

With the aid of arms control technology and artificial intelligence, a team of scientists at Cardiff University's School of Mathematics has developed a method that uses underwater microphones to provide early warnings of potentially deadly tsunamis.

We've all seen footage of disaster victims being hoisted into helicopters, in litter-type stretchers. It's not a good thing if those litters start spinning or swaying, though, which is what the thrust-vectoring Vita Rescue System is designed to stop.

Evolution occurs as species adapt to environmental pressures, and few environments exert pressures like the Chernobyl exclusion zone. A new study shows evolution in action as frogs within the radioactive region are turning blacker than those outside.

While scientists have already created tight-space-exploring robots based on snakes and cockroaches, rats are also highly adept at squeezing through narrow openings. They now have a robotic equivalent of their own, in the form of the SQuRo.

When arriving at a disaster site, one of the most crucial tasks is to locate any survivors who may be trapped in the debris. A new module is designed to let drones do so, by detecting the radio signals of victims' mobile phones.

A startup created specifically to develop machines for first responders, Company Six, has now unveiled its first creation, a rugged, video-streaming robot called ReadySight that can be tossed into hairy situations.

The frequency of natural disasters over the past two decades is almost double that of the 1980-1999 period, a new report from the UN has revealed, with extreme weather events driven by climate change accounting for a large portion of the uptick.

Toyota and Honda recently started testing a fuel-cell bus designed as a mobile power source for disaster relief. Now Nissan has driven out an emergency response vehicle based on its Leaf electric car that will also provide emergency power.

When disaster strikes, the power often goes out, and it may be a good while before it's restored. Toyota and Honda start testing the Moving e system this month, a fuel cell bus designed to serve as a mobile power source for disaster relief.

Searching for sources of potentially harmful radiation isn't a job that most people would want – so why not get a drone to do it? Well, a team of Czech engineers is currently developing just such an aircraft.

Despite raising the alert level weeks prior to the devastating events of Monday, the violent eruption on White Island was not one authorities were able to predict with any precision, owing to the type of delicate, steam-driven processes that led to its explosion.