Models Predicted Katrina Devastation
Related link: http://news.com.com/Experts+New+Orleans+disaster+was+predicted/2100-1008_3-58462…
The failure of the New orleans levees was explicitly and repeatedly predicted. But failure to assign value to the information made it useless.
I'm not talking politics here, so please let's not debate whether we like Bush or not. I'm talking about the fact that people are dead because the information was there but not acted on. From Reuters via CNET News:
"The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled around," said Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University.
Computer models developed at Louisiana State University and other institutions made detailed projections of what would happen if water flowed over the levees protecting the city or if they failed...
...In light of that, said disaster expert Bill Waugh of Georgia State University, "it's inexplicable how unprepared for the flooding they were."
In comments on Thursday, President Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
But Louisiana State University engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published a five-part series on "The Big One," examining what might happen if they did.
It predicted that 200,000 people or more would be unwilling or unable to heed evacuation orders and that thousands would die. It also predicted that people would be housed in the Superdome, that aid workers would find it difficult to gain access to the city as roads became impassable, as well as many other of the consequences that actually unfolded after Katrina hit this week...
Information design expert Edward Tufte has been evangelizing for years about the implications of the Challenger disaster. The information about the failure of the O-rings was there, but in that case was presented poorly. This time the information was presented about as clearly, forcefully and convincingly as could be expected, but it was not valued. Although our imagery of policy-making derives from Greco-Roman ideals of solonic deliberation, actual policy-making has more in common with a bazaar than a seminar. Somehow we have to get better at assigning value to information. That's what markets do. But the policy-making market is broken.
Is there a technical means of improving the assignment of value to information?
Read More Entries by Spencer Critchley.
Become an O'Reilly Member
Visit the Digital Media Forums
Subscribe to the Digital Media Blog Feed
Subscribe to the Digital Media Newsletter
Informed Debate
The media are supposed to be the Fourth Estate, keeping us informed about the other three. But look at the bind a publicly traded media company is in, with shareholders as its first responsibility: Present carefully reported, balanced news coverage, watch ratings & revenue fall. Go back to shoutfests, celebrity gossip and shopping guides, watch ratings & revenue climb. We don't seem to know how to assign value to information.
Informed Debate
I think there's an issue here about the quality, or existence, of informed public debate about subjects like this. Politicians rarely posess the leadership to care about issues unless there is some prompting to do so from their electorate. So who educates the electorate so that they are informed enough to drive their leaders? Does the US media have any responsibility to do this? They should.
did you or did you not
Nope, not going to get into Bush bashing, or Bush apologias, here. My point is that the warnings have been coming for years (including, I'm sure, during the Clinton Administration) that this very event would happen, but they were not acted on. Many warnings came from the Army Corps of Engineers, who have direct responsibility for the levees, and yet their budget for the New Orleans area was cut. And my question is, is there something we can do about giving information a greater role in decision-making? It is too often out-weighed by ideology, for example.
did you or did you not
want to turn it into another tiring round of senseless Bush-bashing? You did start it yourself after all only a few paragraphs after saying you didn't want it to turn that way...
I think the president meant that noone expected the levee system to fail after it survived the initial onslaught of being hit by the hurricane itself. Remember the failure happened a day or so afterwards, not during the storm.
But the real failure here is with the city itself. They had plans drawn up for situations like this but failed completely to put those plans into operation.
They failed to evacuate their citizens, they failed to provide emergency services, they failed to coordinate with outside agencies trying to control the damage done due to those failures of the city authorities.
They failed to provide the federal government with authority to intervene and send in troops until days had passed, all the while complaining that no troops were being sent (the federal government can't deploy troops inside the US without permission from the states involved for any reason, not even humanitarian aid).
Louisiana failed miserably to use the resources at its disposal to prevent as much of the disaster as it could and control the damage afterwards.
Mississipi, which was far harder hit, was quite effective at managing their own problems and don't now need to come begging to Washington with one hand while handing out press releases complaining about Washington wanting to kill their people for not voting for Bush with the other.