With my studies soon to be commencing I’m going to be reading a lot more. Thus each week I’ll post a set of links of interesting articles across the web on risk and disaster management. Here’s this week’s list, happy reading:

• Chemical Weapons and the Scientists who make them – a brief history of the development of chemical weapons, some of the notable scientists who helped in their creation and the treaties prohibiting their use (did you know that Syria is not a signatory to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention).

• What Did Chicago Look Like Before the Great Fire? – a great map comparing the city of Chicago before the great fire of 1871 and an aerial photo from today.

• Landscape Scale Influences of Forest Area and Housing Density on House Loss in the 2009 Victorian Bushfires – a new paper in PLoS One on the latest research out of the Black Saturday bushfires suggesting that for vegetation management to be effective in reducing house loss in extreme fires it may need to penetrate bushland up to 1km from houses.

• The war that isn’t going to happen – A review of a new book (Cyber War will Not Take Place by Thomas Rid) on what it claims is a vastly overhyped threat.

• The New Flood Insurance Disaster – Discusses the flaws of the US National Flood Insurance Program, the flaws of its current reforms and a possible pathway to a program that accommodates both financial sustainability and improved risk reduction.