Most homeowners are unaware that their home insurance policies are extremely limited when it comes to flood protection. Insurance companies are pointing at a lack of flood risk information across Canada, that reflects inconsistent standards, mapping and knowledge that are costing all Canadians: Insurance executives say homeowners will never have access to comprehensive flood insurance […]
Tag Archives: environment
Little Qualicum Falls
Last week we enjoyed a brief trip out to Vancouver Island. Here is a short set of photos taken on a hike around Little Qualicum Falls. There is immense pleasure to be derived from watching nature and understanding why things are the way they are.
Nuclear Risk
One disaster after another. It seems that there are few countries that have come through the past couple of years without wearing some damage from disasters economic or natural. Once again, the Ring of Fire has awoken and claimed thousands of lives. Japan has been considered one of the best prepared countries for a natural […]
The Price of Ignoring Water Infrastructure
Image by urbanworkbench via Flickr We’ve been living on borrowed time when it comes to infrastructure, not just the communities in the Kootenays, but towns and cities of all sizes across North America. From what I can tell, more than half of the pipe in the ground in this part of the world is older […]
The Story of Oil in the 21st Century
Image by Barrybar via Flickr If you want to get a picture of the last twenty or thirty years of the oil industry, then Oil – Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower is a must read. Released in June 2010, it just missed out on recording one of the biggest […]
Post 950
Image by urbanworkbench via Flickr So I’ve been online on UrbanWorkbench.com for about four years now. It all started back in Newcastle Australia, before we’d really decided for sure that we were moving back to Canada. There have been 950 posts in that time, and admittedly things have slowed down over the past couple of […]
Why I Write
Image by urbanworkbench via Flickr Writing is part of my daily routine, I write a lot, both for work and for myself. Being an engineer and a writer seems to be a contradiction to most people, as though the hard analytical mind of an engineer can simply not operate in a creative endeavor such as […]
Set Up for Failure
As a society, (or a species, take your pick), we are terrible at planning and strategising much further than what we are planning to eat for dinner. while Japanese companies plan for world domination in five generations, we are stuck in a revolving door of problems that need immediate attention. But even when we get […]