When it rains here, West Texans brace for the worst. With nowhere to go, water collects across sidewalks, roads and highways — the flat, desert landscape becomes a wetland in the blink of an eye.

Local officials in Ector County, which includes Odessa, said the region’s drainage system is out of date. But paying for upgrades will be a tremendous challenge.

Population, housing and commercial development have spiked, and the infrastructure has not kept up. Its drainage system, installed in the 1970s, is not equipped to handle the growth, county officials said.

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Trelawney Parish sits in a rural, agricultural region of Western Jamaica that borders the country’s largest contiguous rainforest. Under normal circumstances, the parish is relentlessly green — covered in lush vegetation and long rows of orange trees — but the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa has “almost completely annihilated” the area, according to firefighter Ronell Hamilton. “Everything here is brown right now. It looks like California.”

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Telecommunications once seemed like the passive layer of critical infrastructure—pipes and switches that connected everything yet rarely drew attention. That perception ended long ago, particularly with the transition to 5G ecosystems.

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The growing backlog of bridges and public buildings in need of repair or replacement poses an increasing threat to state finances, but tracking of maintenance liabilities varies wildly across the states.

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Hurricanes are America’s most destructive natural hazards, causing more deaths and property damage than any other type of disaster. Since 1980, these powerful tropical storms have done more than US$1.5 trillion in damage and killed more than 7,000 people.

The No. 1 cause of the damages and deaths from hurricanes is storm surge.

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In this part of Texas, residents stock up on bottled water in between boil notices.  It’s part of life in a place where water pipes are old, corroded and falling apart. 

In the High Plains, near Lubbock, farmers worry that their groundwater wells will run dry.  

In North Texas, local elected leaders and business tycoons frantically search for new sources of water to meet the demand of a surging population.  

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Securing the Digital Frontier: How Micro Storage Technology is Rewriting Cybersecurity Protocols The physical security of digital assets has long been the forgotten stepchild of cybersecurity strategy. While CISOs obsess...

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Zero Trust: The Unsung Hero of Cybersecurity Cybersecurity professionals are drowning in complexity. Acronyms fly like digital confetti, vendors promise silver bullets, and CISOs find themselves perpetually playing catch-up with...

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