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I remember the national geographic article as well. I thought about it
when I heard Katrina was heading towards New Orleans. In retrospect not
paying more attention to the levies was a horrible mistake, just like
not paying more attention to the fact that airplanes filled with fuel
can be used as bombs when crashed into tall buildings.
How many known areas of risk are out there right now? I'm willing to
bet there are way to many to fix given the amount of money we have (or
could have even if we re-prioritzed defense w/re disaster preparedness).
People hate to ask optimization questions where loss of life is one of
the variables in the equation. But in the absence of some kind of
optimization of how we spend disaster preparednes dollars, we're left
not knowing if we made the right decisions.
+-------------+--------------------+
| Money spent | disaster happened |
+-------------+--------------------+
| X | X |
| | X |
| X | |
+-------------+--------------------+
The first row represents spending everyone can feel good about. The
second row looks bad in retrospect (especially to people directly
effected). The third row is in danger of looking like wasted money.
Big money gets spent on addressing big single points of failure. It may
be that looking back at what actually killed people in Louisiana, there
are some quick wins, especially with small individual and distributed
efforts.
Bruce Scheier often talks about how to spend on security, when there's
always multiple points of failure and never truly enough money to go
around. His blog article on Katrina is short and mainly makes the point
that money spent on disaster response benefits no matter what causes the
disaster.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/09/security_lesson.html
----->N
-----Original Message-----
From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:len.bullard@intergraph.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 8:56 AM
To: 'jim.fuller@ruminate.co.uk'; Jim Ancona
Cc: Ken North; XML Developers List
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Responding to Katrina (offtopic even if XML is
part of the soluti on)
Ok, but if you live in America (which you don't so don't take this
personnally, Jim F.)
possibly drive a petroleum consuming auto, your head is on that list,
and so
is mine.
Read the National Geographic article.
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/index.html
Just guessing, but I think FEMA will take the hit because they are
mostly
defenseless
but given the results, everyone failed.
Can we say, conflict of interests? We rolled the dice and lost. Is it
a
game we want to keep playing at these stakes? The answer is likely yes.
Technical solutions are part of the solution. How much will you pay to
party on Bourbon Street, drink chicory coffee at the Cafe du Monde and
drive an SUV? No free lunch. That interests me because it tells me
how much product we have to develop and why. The technologies this list
is dedicated to have a prominent role.
len
From: jim.fuller@ruminate.co.uk [mailto:jim.fuller@ruminate.co.uk]
I think the solution to this particular problem is clear; all heads
should
roll should roll who were in the chain of command, with the potential
for
criminal charges to be pressed.
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