The paper originated from a meeting held in January that brought together partner organizations from many different sectors concerned with the issues surrounding mitigation benefits and challenges.  The project was funded through a cooperative agreement established between NEMA and FEMA in the hope of facilitating mitigation dialogue and
establishing relationships between those in the mitigation community.

• Download the white paper as an eight-page PDF.

Disaster City is a 52-acre training facility,that delivers the full array of skills and techniques needed by todays emergency response professionals. Located at Texas A&M University, the mock community features full-scale, collapsible structures designed to simulate various levels of disaster and wreckage that can be customized for the specific training needs of any group. In this video, we continue our guided tour of Disaster City from Bob McKee, director of Texas Task Force One.

Visit the "Bring It Home" channel on YouTube. This series of videos is produced by KAMU-TV at Texas A&M University in College Station.

• 7 p.m. Central on KAMU 90.9 FM

Thursday, July 9

• Noon Eastern on WFED 1500 AM (with an encore at 9 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, July 12)

Click here to listen to the podcast of the June 30/July 2 show.

Guests include:

• Andrew Thomas of FEMA on a long overdue program to repair fire hydrants damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
• Robin Kane of the Transportation Security Administration on TSA's testing facilities.
• Gene Aloise of the Government Accountability Office on progress in radiation detection.
• Michael Dumloao and John Shea of DHS on using social media during catastrophes.
• William Graham of the EMP Commission on assessing the threat from electromagnetic pulses.
• Neville Clarke, director of the National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense.
• Rusty Cawley, a Texas A&M communications coordinator, on the Integrative Center for Homeland Security's social media program.

In this Texas A&M University program, Dr. David McIntyre, director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security, brings in guest speakers to examine the definitions of Homeland Security and strategy from historical, comparative and analytical perspectives.

The first episode includes interviews with:

• Brian Linn, professor of history at Texas A&M, who discusses his book which parallels the Philippine War to the current War in Iraq.
• Jim Olson, senior lecturer at the Bush School of Government and Public Services at Texas A&M, who speaks about his work as a former C.I.A. interrogator.
• Director of the Public Service Leadership Program Joseph Cerami on leading an exercise on international negotiation.
• Daniel Sui, professor of geography at Texas A&M, on geospatial technologies and their vast implications
• Alyssa Stephens, operations officer at the Integrative Center for Homeland Security, on “Ten Key Challenges for Improving Homeland Security” and “Reorganizing U.S. Intelligence.”

For a sneak preview, click here.

• 7 p.m. Central on KAMU 90.9 FM

Thursday, July 2

• Noon Eastern on WFED 1500 AM (with an encore at 9 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, July 5)

Click here to listen to the podcast of the June 30/July 2 show.

Guests include:

• David Coursey of PC World on the potential failure of the GPS system.
• Reporter Matthew Harwood on the technology of drug smuggling.
• Bob Brewin of NextGov on a presidential network to survive nuclear attack.
• Joel Millman of the Wall Street Journal on doing business in a chaotic Mexico.
• John Hollywood of RTI International on the detection of terrorist activity.
• Shaun Kennedy, director of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense
• Neville P. Clarke, director the National Center for Foreing Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense
• Laura Spencer, deputy director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security, on the  TSA's bomb-sniffing puppies program

• Download the guidance as a 173-page PDF.

The GTD is an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world.  Unlike many other event databases, the GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as transnational and international terrorist incidents that have occurred during this time period.  For each GTD incident, information is available on the date and location of the incident, the weapons used and nature of the target, the number of casualties, and—when identifiable—the perpetrator.  Over 80,000 of these incidents have been included in the updated database, and this information can be extracted from the database to provide reference data as it was after the attacks in Mumbai.

The previous versions of the database (GTD 1 and GTD 2) covered events that occurred from 1970 through 2004.  The update to the GTD (http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/) synthesized previous versions and expanded the data to include events from 1970 through 2007.  Annual updates will continue to be added in the future. 

The time is right for a new strain of influenza to sweep through the human population, says Dr. Barbara Quiram, director of the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness at the School of Rural Public Health, Texas A&M Health Science Center. In this interview, Dr. Quiram explains how the USA Center is helping rural health providers to prepare for the threat.

Visit the "Bring It Home" channel on YouTube. This series of videos is produced by KAMU-TV at Texas A&M University in College Station.