Articles Read

Week 2
Blanca Polo

THE NEXT BIG ONE 
Where America is most vulnerable and how the nation can better manage the risks ahead.

This article is from Business Week Magazine. (http://wwww.businessweek.com) Sept 19, 2005. This one was published right after hurricane Katrina had hit the Gold Coast.

This article is particularly interesting because among other things it has a table where it cites different kinds of disasters. Here is a summary of the table:

Terrorism
  • Nuclear bomb- a stolen or homemade nuke explodes in a major US city. 
  • Biological attack- terrorists could disperse smallpox, ebola or other germs in a subway station or airport and let travelers spread an epidemic worldwide.
  • chemical attack- a bomb at a chemical facility could create a Bhopal-like poisonous fume
  • dirty bomb- a conventional bomb can spew radioactive material and contaminate a large urban area
  • coordinated attacks- simultaneous terror attacks on multiple targets could overwhelm emergency response and communication systems.
Natural Disasters
  • category 5 or 6 hurricane-huge storms in the Atlantic can pack winds of 200 mph and send 30ft storm surges onto shore.
  • earthquake - buildings will collapse, fires will ignite, roads will be destroyed. Land pathways for communication will be unusable.
  • firestorm- A city set ablaze could create a holocaust of flame smoke and superheated gases.
Medical Disasters
  • pandemic - mutated flu virus could spread around the world before the vaccine can catch up.
  • radiation leak- coolant loss at a nuclear power plant could send radioactive cloud over nearby cities.

They suggest the following to help prepare for the worst:

One of their examples is shocking. If a mayor earthquake hits LA, all of LAs major highways would crumble (except perhaps Route101 north) Rail traffic will be disrupted and cargo would back up at the ports causing an estimated hit to the local economy of 36 billion.

Computerworld  Sunday, Sept 14, 2005
Wearable technology to aid disaster relief

This article describes the use of wearable technology so that field emergency workers can transmit information in realtime to their supervisors that would be then be able to advise them about what to do. 

However, this technology is 3D and virtual reality goggles among other things. the amount of information transferred back to the base will be massive while perhaps the feedback from base to the field will be minimal. In any case this is just an example of a similar technology being used but by no means it is similar to what we want to implement. We want something that requires low bandwidth, not-real time and that can be transferred in bulk.

Time spent:

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