had been warning New York City for a decade that a hurricane
like Sandy barreling in from the east could flood downtown
Manhattan and coastal New Jersey. Most recently, he and other
scientists published a big 2011 report detailing the threat and
recommending ways of protecting the region against storm surges.
Jacob felt Sandy's wrath firsthand, too—his house in Piermont,
N.Y., on the enormous Hudson River about 25 kilometers north of
Manhattan, was flooded with 60 centimeters (two feet) of water.
He had already raised his home as much as local building codes
would allow, but clearly that was not enough. Jacob, a
seismologist and specialist in disaster risk management at
Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory in
Palisades, N.Y., graciously took a brief break from his hectic
day of shucking out mud from his ruined home (see video by his
colleague) to explain to Scientific American what coastal cities
and townships must do to prepare for more destruction from
rising sea levels and storm surges. [