We live in a changing world with multiple and evolving threats to national security, including terrorism, asymmetrical warfare (conflicts between agents with different military powers or tactics), and social unrest. Visually depicting and assessing these threats using imagery and other geographically-referenced information is the mission of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). As the nature of the threat evolves, so do the tools... More >>

The United States will be subject to damaging earthquakes in the future, and some earthquakes will occur in highly populated and vulnerable areas with major effects on the nation as a whole. Efforts to reduce such effects are needed to limit the loss of life, damage to buildings, and economic cost of a major earthquake. This report presents a 20-year roadmap for earthquake hazard and risk reduction, assessing the activities, and their costs, tha... More >>

Collaboration between local private and public sector organizations is the key to building resilient communities that can withstand disasters, a new National Research Council report finds. Cooperation could help reduce the impact of a disaster by helping communities anticipate threats, adapt to adversity, and recover after a crisis by engaging community stakeholders to identify risk and leverage available resources. This report suggests ... More >>

Earth's surface has been in constant flux throughout time, but in recent decades the pace and extent of human-induced changes has reached unprecedented levels. With Earth's population projected to peak at 8 to 12 billion people by 2050 and the additional stress of climate change, it is more important than ever to understand how and where these changes are occurring.Increasingly, innovation in the geographical sciences is advancing our knowledg... More >>

Chemical, physical, biotic, and human processes constantly reshape Earth's surface from particles to continents, over timescales from nanoseconds to millions of years. These processes form a complex network of interactions and feedbacks, but these interplays are not well understood, and challenging questions face science and society: How did Earth surface processes interact to create the landscapes of today? How will changing processes shap... More >>