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Philip
Buckle. Posting to the Natural Hazards-Disasters Listserv, 16 August 2003
It
seems to me that what we are witnessing here is a new type of vulnerability
that "developed" socities in particular are susceptible to. But
this is not the only - or even a rare - event of this type. The loss of
power to central Auckland (New Zealand) some years ago, the partial loss
of water to Sydney (Australia) when the water supply was contaminated with
cryptospiridium and the loss of gas to the State of Victoria (Australia)
in 1998 are other examples of "coupled" networks, with limited
(and increasingly limited after the processes of privatisation) redundancy
and back up systems.
It
is not just the New World that is at risk in this sense - Britain last
winter suffered major transport system disruption when a few inches of
snow fell and dislocated road traffic, and this summer record heat has
caused train cancellations as rails warp and make usual train speeds
unsafe.
I
think that we should be investigating this sort of issue from at least
two points of view. First, how networks rather than independent and
autonomous entities behave and second from the perspective of complexity
theory which raises issues of emergence and the perdicatbility of one
action leading to another.
But
this needs to be put in perspective. This most recent power loss in North
America means an increase in risk for many ofthe individuals and families
who are affected. How do people on life support systems cope; how do
hospitals maintain services and so on. There has been no mention - so far
as I can tell from media reports - of who is at risk and what support they
are being given.
Perhaps,
finally, this is a classic example of a disaster - where the capacity
of the wider society or of government to provide support is impacted and
reduced because it is itself a victim of the event.
My
own experience of managing utility disruption is that it is complex, fraught
and extrremely sensitive politically while at the same time requiring
rapid and definitive solutions to issues that seem to arise spontaneously
and which extend from the personal (how do you cook/clean/heat/cool
without power) to the national (how is industry or emergency services
capability sustained when power is absent).
Philip
Buckle
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