It's not as though nobody knew it was coming (Risks of large systemswhere there's no one accountable)

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: "Peter Bachman"<peterb () cequs com>
Sent: 02/09/05 12:39:51 PM
To: "dave () farber net"<dave () farber net>
Subject: It's not as though nobody knew it was coming (Risks of large systemswhere there's no one accountable)

Dave,

This is so sad and ironic.

And very true. In the past, I have helped run communications scenarios as a 
contractor for FEMA where we simulated
disaster events and the ability of first responders to cope with every 
increasing scripted difficulties. First responders and communications have 
come a long way since I did this 20 years ago.

While I don't do this anymore; I'm sure that New Orleans has been virtually 
flooded many times in regional simulations involving the  various agencies. 
It was pretty well known public knowledge as the newspaper articles attest.

In these scenarios command and control communications always breaks down; 
members of the dominant political infrastructure go absent, etc. It's just 
about what one expect. These are disasters, after all, even when they are 
simulated.

Just like people running 3 Mile island in  Limerick, PA were forced to use 
the payphone at at local c-store we repeat Kubrick's cinematic dialog of the 
Cold War MAD of  the secure phone line between Russia and the US.

Or the base liason officer trying to get change out of the Coca-Cola (tm) 
machine to call the President.

The metaphor of the machine is the entire structure that's set up to deal 
with these situations, and  while people have authority, (and choose to use 
and abuse it) the whole thing does not work all that well, like the CRM 
discriminator that gets fried, the base commander, and so on.

 "Hello? Hello, Dimitri? Listen, I can't hear too well, do you suppose you 
could turn the music down just a little? Oh, that's much better. Yes. Fine, 
I can hear you now, Dimitri. Clear and plain and coming through fine. I'm 
coming through fine too, eh? Good, then. Well then as you say we're both 
coming through fine."  (Dr. Strangelove)

To wit, New Orleans has been a known major scenario, and therefore the 
situation has to be looked at as something that:

1) Just happened as part of a natural processs. (no one to blame)

2) happened as part of a design in conjunction with natural geographic 
processes. (planners and policy makers to blame)

3) happened with the choices and knowledge of the various actors involved in 
those processes based on their understanding (or lack of understanding) of 
the risks involved. (ourselves to blame)

To my knowledge, no one has been forced in the U.S. to live anywhere, (with 
the important  exceptions of historical relocations of tribal nations, and 
slavery) except when constrained by economic circumstances.

However, big structural economic issues like this operate at a different 
level, and will have to be applied to the re-design/reconstruction of 
Nouveax Orleans. This is a time for "big ideas" rather than business as 
usual.

It's not that "they", (the policy makers) don't understand the problem, it's 
developing the overall political will to apply policy in a free market 
economy governed by the invisible hand.

Was the risk of being wiped out by Sadam's 45 minute Nukes (see Dr. S above) 
more than a Cat 4-5 Hurrican hitting the Gulf? Even with historical 
hindsight factored out? We only have so much money, where is it going to be 
spent?

Brutally, the market is adjusting for the disaster. While individuals may 
benefit in the short term in ignoring ecological reality, and thus as 
economic actors will pay a price, they will not be held responsible.

In fact, we can see here that no one is in charge, and no one is 
responsible, because we all are responsible, and therefore no one is.

To that extent, the IP list is invaluable at getting at the root issues and 
surfacing ideas that may be unacceptable within the context of various 
players who see their particular viewpoints.

If the entire situation is both a long term historical connection between, 
politics, commerce and geography with organizations like the Corps of 
Engineer being used like a proxy warrior between natural forces and economic 
forces, the solution will have to be architectural.

Good architectural designs balance natural forces and economic and political 
concerns. They admit that there is no one solution, and that a stronger 
solution is one that takes into account various structural concerns and uses 
them to create strong structures as opposed to trying to defeat natural 
forces.

Given that we do in fact have limited resources, (politics is described as 
the competition for limited resources) at some level a priority was given as 
to what could be done given the resources allowed and of course, since that 
priority was established not to reinforce
the levees beyond that of what a Cat 3 Hurricane would do, based on a cost 
benefit analysis, then it is important to realize that what happened was a 
result of a natural occurence, but one that had been already calculated in 
terms of risks.

peterb () cequs com

Cequs Inc.

http://www.cequs.com 


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/