A weekly round-up of news, articles and surveys to make your next emergency better. Have a suggestion for the round-up? Contact me at abetteremergency@gmail.com.

Bonds that pay out when catastrophe strikes are rising in popularity. I find this both fascinating and disturbing, how about you?

While reading In Middle Ages, Societies Surprisingly Responsive To Natural Disasters, it made me consider our inability to learn. The same problems have been cropping up for centuries. We still look baffled when they happen.

Want to Save Lives? You Need a Map of What’s Doing Us In — an article that’s almost too comprehensive to take in at one sitting. However, this is a great resource to use when designing and comparing strategies relative to resources and problems. We need to use big data to to drive decision making and influence policy makers. Instead, we’re threatened by how it could change existing programs.

I started a couple of discussions on LinkedIn which looked at the future of EMS relative to our aging population, changes in health care laws, and the need for more out-of-hospital health care services. I’ll condense responses into a future post, but this article illustrates what may become more commonplace, Program could ease personnel shortage. Also, Dallas Fire-Rescue EMS paramedics to make scheduled house calls shows that some agencies are already positioning themselves for the future.

I read US lagging in life expectancy despite spending most on health, and wondered when we’ll build a health care system that actually improves the lives of our citizens.

I also have LinkedIn discussions that deal with the impacts of climate change. After a quick read of the comments, it seems that non-United States commenters buy into the concept more readily than those from this country. Since the effects will be felt first in more impoverished nations, that makes sense. However, this article on how Climate Change is Altering the Lives of Alaska’s Natives suggests it is hurting Americans today. We need to pay attention and not wait until it’s in our back yard.

I found #gunfire: can Twitter really help cops find crime? an interesting read. In particular, the expectation that a criminal element would be able to flood social media with bogus information in order to draw resources away. In the same vein, I recall that some used key words that were likely to attract the attention of the NSA in order to flood them with false hits and to protest the agency’s voyeurism into the private lives of Americans.

Speaking of protests, Arlington residents question “excessive” tactics in regional disaster drill makes you wonder if the residents would have been as vocal after a real event hit their community and agencies had not practiced. More military vehicles will hit the streets as war efforts wind down because surplus equipment will be picked up by public safety and emergency management agencies. We should get used to it.

I really like Seattle, but when I read Why doesn’t Seattle have a public earthquake warning system? I started to wonder what the value of a 60 second warning would be. When you build a beautiful city on a hill, next to the water…let’s just say that in an earthquake, bad will happen. Maybe it’s worth the risk.

Ending on an upbeat note, I think This Disaster Housing Is Made From Upcycled Relief Water Bottles shows what ingenuity is all about.