> More research across disciplines is needed<p>Lack of research is not the bottleneck here. Having worked with a Canadian environmental non-profit on ecological impact assessment (how are natural events interconnected, how effective are our environmental efforts), the problem of natural disaster prevention is moreso a problem of political and economic will than actual science/modelling/data.<p>For example, there are obvious things you can do to reduce flash flooding and wildfire risk and damage, but government/taxpayers/corporations are often unwilling to take these measures since they:<p>- are expensive, though eventually more than make up their worth in disasters averted and scale of disaster reduced<p>- are not immediate fixes, since they usually involve restoring ecological health i.e. forests, rivers, ecosystems<p>- are not guaranteed to prevent disasters - only reduce their occurrence and severity<p>- generally involve reducing the "development" (sprawl) of cities and the "productivity" (unsustainable practices) of big farms<p>I hope this summer increases environmental disaster prevention budgets everywhere. May the Ministry of the Future wet bulb event never happen.