Your Daily Risk Assessment Briefing

 

Photo Credit- NOAA Know your Risk

 

# 6407

 

Every day busy CEOs along with investors, emergency planners, politicians- and even the President of the United States - receive  specialized Daily Intelligence briefings outlining current or anticipated threats, along with other vital information.

 

While you may not hold the fate of nations, a billion dollar portfolio, or a fortune 500 company in your hands you do have a need to know your risks if you want you and your family to be prepared for a disaster. 

 

And those risks can, and do, change on a daily basis. Particularly those involving climate and weather. 

 

Fortunately, the Internet makes it easy to create a short list of websites to visit each day (I do so early each morning) that in a few short minutes will give you an early warning of what threats might be expected in the next few days.

 

Depending where you live, and where your personal interests lie, you will probably want to customize your `daily briefing’.  But to get you started, a quick tour of mine.

 

Note: I quickly scan these websites for news, alerts, or forecasts of interest for my region.  I certainly don’t attempt to read them in depth each day. 

 

First stop, NOAAWatch’s Daily Briefing which provides an excellent overview of the natural threats facing the nation.

 

 

An excellent example of some of the forecast tools available is this heat index map for this coming weekend, which shows extreme heat conditions are expected in the south eastern United States.

 

 

My second stop is usually NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, which looks ahead as far as a week for areas that may expect severe weather.  At a glance I can see when, and where, weather trouble is expected.

 

 

And during hurricane season, I also swing by the National Hurricane Center website each morning (and if there is an active storm, several times each day).

 

Since we are approaching the 11 year solar maximum, and since I have a deep interest in astronomy, I also swing by Spaceweather.com or NOAA’s SPACE WEATHER PREDICTION CENTER for the latest on solar activity. 

 

As I mentioned last January in Situational Awareness: Google Public Alerts, with the help of Google Earth you can also monitor real-time emergency alerts from all around the world.

 

 

And last, but not least, I visit the FEMA Blog to see what they are keeping an eye on.

 

During the day and overnight, I rely on NOAA WEATHER RADIO (NWR) and Twitter to follow @FEMA, @NHC_Atlantic, @NOAA and @CraigAtFEMA for real-time emergency alerts.

 

Like having an emergency kit and a first aid kit - having a weather radio is an important part of being prepared.

 

Of course, just knowing about the threats isn’t enough. You have to make use of that information.

 

To learn how to prepare as an individual, family, business owner, or community I would invite you to visit the following sites and use THIS LINK to access some of my preparedness blogs.

 

FEMA http://www.fema.gov/index.shtm

READY.GOV http://www.ready.gov/

AMERICAN RED CROSS http://www.redcross.org/

 

While some people lie awake at night worrying about disasters, I’ve discovered that being prepared is the key to sleeping well.

Preparing is easy.

 

It’s worrying that’s hard.

Getting My Daily Twitter Fix

 

 

 

#5291

 

For those of us who remember the single-line BBS (bulletin board systems) of the early 1980s, back when MS-DOS 2.11 was king, and a 1200 baud modem was an upgrade, today’s instant communications on the Internet seems almost miraculous.

 

Email didn’t exist back then.

 

But you could leave a message for someone else who used the same BBS system, disconnect, and check back in a day or two for a reply.

 

Times have certainly changed.   Today, between email and Twitter, we can get real-time updates from hundreds of friends in a continual flow of information across our desktops.

 

The problem is, keeping up. 

 

Particularly with Twitter, which can easily send you thousands of `tweets’ in a single day.  

 

I  use a small app (Echofon) added into my Firefox browser that handles tweets very well, holding them in a queue until I choose to view them.

 

While that helps enormously, I still miss out on a lot of valuable content that streams from those that I follow.  Articles and blogs that I really would like to follow up and read, but haven’t the time to click and read as they come across my twitter app. 

 

A couple of months ago I mentioned the Emergency Management (EM) Daily, a `twitter newspaper’ created using paper.li.

 

Every 24 hours this paper is electronically published, with highlights and links to the best content `tweeted’ by those followed by @AllHandsDotNet, which is the twitter  account for http://www.all-hands.net.

 

 

Each edition is apt to have a couple of hundred linked articles, easily arranged into 8 or 9 broad categories for quick viewing.

 

This twitter newspaper has been a godsend, enabling me to go back and pick up on information I had missed. I’ve since added 5 more daily Twitter newspapers to my reading list, and hope to discover more over time.

 

These genre based newspapers are a terrific way to quickly scan the wealth of content published online over the previous 24 hours. 

 

In addition to The EM Daily, I also read:

 

The microbiology Daily

As shared by 93 people on Cesar Sanchez’s Twitter list

 

The Sciencemob Daily

As shared by 118 people on Liz Ditz’s Twitter list

 

 

The MicrobiologyBytes Daily

As shared by MicrobiologyBytes + 33 followed people on Twitter

 

 

The Daily Ren

As shared by Rene F. Najera, MPH + 77 followed people on Twitter

 

 

Food & Agriculture Spotlight

As shared by 212 people on FAO Media Centre’s Twitter list

 

 

You can search for newspapers that cover topics you may be interested in at http://paper.li/, and yes, you can create your own online newspaper as well.

 

 

 

If you are looking for a better way to keep track of the avalanche of information that flows continually across the twitterverse, pick a couple of papers that cater to your interests, and give it a go.

 

Just as with your Twitter feed, the quality and reliability of the information in these newspapers will depend upon the quality and reliability of the people they follow.  

 

So examine the list of each paper’s daily contributors, and choose your Daily Newspapers wisely. 

 

And as always, Caveat Lector.