Readers respond to John Seabrook's piece on floods, Eyal Press's article on the National Restaurant Association, and Adam Gopnik's essay on the history of gambling in New York. John Seabrook's piece on the increasing frequency and formidable power of river flooding is both moving and scientifically instructive (" The Flood Will Come, " July 28th). I served as Vermont's commissioner of health for eight years, during which time I participated in the state's annual flood-disaster response, and I believe it's important to expand the public-safety discussion so that it includes the protection of human health and wellness. Climate change poses the biggest threat to public health, and storms and floods have abundant immediate impacts: drinking-water contamination; mold damage to homes and businesses; the spread of infectious disease; soil erosion that affects food quality; and limitations on recreation, transportation, and medical-care access. Climate change is also a major source of stress on the population's mental health, and on the country's already fragile mental-health system.

As the Chief Revenue Officer at HungerRush, Olivier Thierry is influencing customer expectations with AI as the restaurant industry has begun experimenting with it, he tells Spiceworks News & Insights' Technology Editor, Neha Kulkarni. Restaurants have realized taking on new technology will help them not only survive the challenges but achieve results, he notes. From labor shortages to improving customer experience, in this edition of Tech Talk, Olivier discusses how AI can overcome these challenges and allow restaurants to reduce human error. He also shares how natural language processing can interpret customer attitudes in phone orders and have a real place in understanding customer experience. Olivier: The pandemic turned the restaurant industry upside down, and many of its setbacks are still being felt today.

But, as we close in on 2020, serious forecasts for the year 2030 are starting to emerge, with two dropping only this week. The first, from the National Restaurant Association in America, is a report on the projected state of the US restaurant industry. The second, from global market research firm Mintel, is a look at predicted consumer trends across the globe. In our recent Food Trends 2020 whitepaper, we highlighted three key macro trends ripe for evolution, with plant-based developments, cuisines from the Asia-Pacific region and healthy eating/nutritional focus all expected to progress in the UK next year. In 2030, aside from the expected advances in AI, VR and other abbreviated futurisms, some of the most interesting predictions stem from the likes of wellbeing and veganism, with farming, delivery and the very definition of a'restaurant' all cropping up.

Employers, workers, policymakers, and think tanks have begun raising concerns that the push toward automation is going to leave a lot of people without a job--raising loads of ethical and societal questions in the process. With these concerns in mind, a new coalition--co-founded by the National Restaurant Association along with the Littler Workplace Policy Institute and Prime Policy Group--is picking up momentum. The Emma Coalition will study what it calls "technology-induced displacement of employees," or TIDE, and develop ideas for how employers and employees can prepare for and adapt to the effects of increasing automation. "Government, industry, and policymakers all have an opportunity to examine TIDE issues today, and forge consensus around policies that can help us prepare in advance for the technology and workforce of the future," said Shannon Meade, the National Restaurant Association's vice president of public policy and the new coalition's executive director, in comments to Restaurant Business. The coalition is named for the granddaughter of one of the founders.