Not All Catastrophes Are Created Equal

In the U.S., there have been two defining events of the 21st century: 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, both of which have exposed breathtaking incompetence on the part of the government, as well as the disturbing vulnerability of the world's sole superpower.

It didn't take long for comparisons to emerge between Hurricane Katrina and the fire storm in southern California. Mostly it had to do with the scale of social displacement in California - over 500,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes and communities. As numerous commentators have commented, this was the largest evacuation in California's history, and the largest in the country since Hurricane Katrina. Point taken. However, there are a number of important differences.

Insurance estimates for the fire damage to date hover around $2 billion. This would be about 1/20th of the insurance cost of Hurricane Katrina.

Fire and water are different. Amongst natural disasters, flooding is far and away the largest cause of death and property damage. Water tends to overstay its visit, turning stagnant, redistributing sewage and toxins, and generally creating an unholy nuisance. Drowning, disease, and property damage are the legacy of floods. Fire, by contrast, is dangerous and destructive, but relatively quick. All creatures know to get out of the way of fire - immediately. Water is deceptive. It's usually not apparent that there is a problem until there is a problem and then it's a little late.

Southern California is not the Gulf Coast. There is a wealth of difference, as well as a difference of wealth. For SoCal natives, the burning of coastal communities like Malibu and San Diego is familiar because it happens repeatedly and because these are not generally poor areas. Far from it. Everyone deserves sympathy for unexpected loss (even rich people), but we all know, or at least suspect, that many of these people have better than average material reserves to recover from such a loss (excluding life of course), as well as good auto and home insurance. Add to that the unparalleled efficiency of the response of first responders and emergency personnel. The President was quick to praise the handling of the fire storm and to attribute credit to lessons from Hurricane Katrina. However, the competency of the California response had less to do with federal improvement than with ample (and repeated) experience by state and local officials (see "A Firestorm, A Deluge, and A Sharp Political Dig," NYT 10/25/2007).

An oft repeated complaint in California and elsewhere is that people should not be allowed to build in areas that are repeatedly exposed to natural hazards like fire or flood. I heard this again on NPR as callers called in to comment. In particular, I recall a caller calling from the North Shore of Massachusetts who passionately derided rampant development speculation and overbuilding in California for the root cause of the problem, which in turn, he argued, simply imposed economic burdens on the rest of society. Unlike other forms of insurance, however, fire insurance is actually well calibrated with risk because it is one of the oldest forms of insurance and fire is a known quantity, especially in California (see "Fires' Cost to Insurers Is in Range of $1 Billion" NYT 10/25/2007). The certainty of fire insurance is in stark contrast to flood insurance. People in California with fire insurance (as well as private insurers) actually shoulder more of their fair share of the economic risk than, say, coastal residents of Massachusetts who are exposed to the risk of flooding. On Cape Cod, 44% of residents have to be covered by a government-run program because no private insurer with a sense of economic sanity would insure them (see "Hurricane Fears Cost Homeowners Coverage" NYT 10/16/2007). When the next major flood event happens in Massachusetts (and it will), it is likely that the government will be picking up most of the tab. On that score, if anyone should move, it should be coastal residents in Massachusetts and other areas along the eastern seaboard.

The irony of the Southern California fire storm of 2007, however, is that it will likely be followed by flash floods and mudslides when the rains come (see InciWeb for further explanation). Let's hope their flood insurance is adequate.

This Blur's For You

Since 9/11, security has become the watchword of the nation, though the initial hysteria has begun to abate somewhat. However, one of the ongoing casualties of the crusade for hyper-security has been access to once-public information. Maps and mappable information have been primary targets. The blurred image comes from Google Maps, and is an apparent attempt to hide the Salem Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant in Salem, Massachusetts. This is not unusual. In fact, one Wikipedia entry has managed to create a lengthy list of sites throughout the world that appear to have been censored by Google Maps - blurred or conspicuously missing imagery (see "Satellite map images with missing or unclear data"). Google has been largely silent about this practice in the U.S., though some governments (e.g., India) have been very public about asking Google to blur images of sensitive sites. At least one local politician in New York is also calling on Google to blur aerial imagery of sensitive military and government sites. There is also evidence that Google may be altering aerial imagery of sensitive commercial sites, such as areas where genetically modified crops are grown (see "What Google Won't Map," Gridskipper).

It's difficult if not impossible to know what kinds of geographic data have been censored or even deemed censor-worthy, either by government or other institutions. In July 2006, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP),which provides the framework for how all levels of government and the private sector will manage the protection of the nation's critical infrastructure and key resources. An important part of this framework is the designation of what actually constitutes "critical infrastructure." In fact, it wasn't long before DHS came under withering criticism by its own Office of Inspector General, as well as Congress, for the NIPP's overly expansive definition of "critical infrastructure." As Senator Barbara Boxer of California put it, "I would love to provide protection for every activity in America, but the reality is that we need to set priorities" (see "DHS Officials Quarrel Over Internal Report," RCR Wireless News 07/24/2006).

The lack of a coherent national policy has not stopped government agencies from implementing their own ad hoc procedures. A recent report by NPR featured the struggle between a computer consultant and the state of Connecticut over access to GIS maps of water and sewer systems in the towns of Greenwich and Stamford (see "Security Officials Seek to Block Some Online Maps" NPR 10/8/ 2007). Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission ruled that such data were too sensitive, and that the towns could only release maps without sewer and water systems, fire hydrants and man holes. Here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the state's GIS dissemination agency MassGIS has implemented minimal security protocol around certain GIS data sets. Users wanting to download GIS data of large hazardous waste generators must first fill out a request, which includes detailed contact information, before being sent a link to enable download of the data.

MassGIS's approach is not too different from policies set in place by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regarding Critical Energy Infrastructure Information (CEII), which FERC defines as "existing and proposed systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, the incapacity or destruction of which would negatively affect security, economic security, public health or safety, or any combination of those matters." That's about as specific as they get (see "FERC Tries to Strike a Fine Balance," Electric Utility Week 11/13/2006). Moreover, FERC allows utilities - whether private or publicly owned - to define for themselves what should be classified as CEII when those entities submit required documentation and information. This loose discretion, and the overzealous application of the CEII designation, actually worked against FERC and the energy industry in at least one case. California officials recently nixed a $700 million liquefied natural gas terminal proposed by Sound Energy Solutions (SES) because neither FERC nor SES were forthcoming with all of the information needed to complete the final Environmental Impact Report (see "Long Beach LNG terminal dead in water after officials end environmental review," Gas Market Report 01/26/2007).

It's worth remembering that there is social value, including safety and security, in public access to information about critical infrastructure and even hazardous or dangerous facilities. Some of the most important laws and traditions around public access in the U.S. were founded specifically on concerns about safety and security. In December 1984, a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India blew up, releasing a deadly cloud of methyl isocyanate gas that killed over 20,000 people in the surrounding community, and permanently maimed up to 100,000 others. It was (and still is) the worst industrial disaster in history. A host of factors were involved in the making of this catastrophe, but one of them was the complete ignorance of anyone outside of the plant about what was going on inside the plant (including local officials). A sister facility in Institute, West Virginia experienced a comparatively minor incident at about the same time (sending 134 people to the hospital), but the horror of Bhopal had already set the world on edge. In the U.S., the federal government and the public were still reeling from the drama at Love Canal and the discovery of previously uncounted and hidden sources of hazardous chemicals throughout the country. As a result, Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) in 1986, which established requirements for emergency planning and reporting on hazardous and toxic chemicals. This legislation required facilities storing or handling potentially hazardous materials to report this information to State Emergency Response Commissions, Local Emergency Planning Committees, and local fire departments. In addition, it created a toxic release inventory (TRI) system that enabled the the tracking and monitoring of chemicals and facilities throughout the country. The TRI and other EPCRA provisions have been some of the most important tools for researchers as well as public health and safety officials. An enormous volume of environmental health and safety research and planning has relied on regular access to mappable TRI data. More importantly, this legislation recognized and institutionalized the right of communities and the public to have access to information about activities with health and safety implications.

On the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy in 2004, two EPA officials reflected on the evolution of incident prevention and response at chemical facilities over the last two decades. They argued that Bhopal and 9/11 were the transformative events, both of which highlighted the issue of safety and security, but with diametrically opposed results (see "The Post-Bhopal and Post-9/11 Transformations in Chemical Emergency Prevention and Response Policy in the United States"). It is an odd twist of circumstances that public disclosure, once touted as the mechanism to promote safety and security, could so quickly be relabeled as a threat to security.

It's Not Just About the Environment, Stupid

The first victims of global climate change are likely to be poor people. This somber reality is borne out on a daily basis by small and large catastrophes that plague the world: floods, drought, earthquakes, diseases. It will be no different with climate change. But if misery likes company, the poor and oppressed can take heart in the realization that they will not suffer alone, though theirs will be a heavier burden. However, the economic and social drag of global environmental change will be real for all of society. Many nice environments and non-human creatures will be lost too.

Since the turn of the 21st century, the inhabitants of Tuvalu have been preparing to evacuate their ancestral home in order to flee the imminent rise of the sea. Tuvalu consists of 9 low-lying coral islands in the South Pacific. The highest point in these islands is only about 15 feet above sea level. Though scientists have determined that sea level is only rising by 5mm per year at this point (about two inches), such a rise has become very noticeable to the inhabitants of Tuvalu, particularly during annual really-high tides, when sea water bubbles up through the porous limestone of the islands, killing off their meager crops and driving people from their homes. In 1999, Tuvaluan representatives appeared at the Fifth Conference of Parties Climate Convention in Bonn, Germany to highlight the dire threat to Pacific island peoples from rising sea levels and other effects of global climate change. This seemed particularly unjust, they argued, given that Tuvaluans have contributed only the smallest fraction to the world's emissions of greenhouse gases. Indeed, the Tuvalu population is only around 11,000 - the second least populated independent country in the world (the Vatican in Rome is first). Territorially, it occupies just 10 square miles - 1/10th the area of Washington, D.C. Tuvaluans called on the industrialized nations of the world to hear their pleas and to take action on a problem for which wealthy, large nations were most responsible and most capable of acting. But what are the complaints of a small group of poor islanders without resources of any significance, without any real trade deals to leverage, and without a military? In the meantime, as the the tiny island nation slowly drowns beneath the waves of an expanding Pacific Ocean, New Zealand has agreed to take in all environmental refugees from Tuvalu (they were rebuffed by Australia). After thousands of years of successful human occupation, scientists expect that the islands will be effectively gone in less than 50 years. But Tuvalu is lucky in some respects. Other sinking islands and their populations in the same region have not yet found a mainland escape route.

Scholars of risk identify two important qualities of hazards and catastrophes: vulnerability and resilience. Vulnerability is the exposure one has to some risk or danger, while resilience is the ability to cope and recover. We are all, to some degree or another, vulnerable to a variety of potential hazards or catastrophes. Most of humanity lives within 5o miles or less of a coast, and all of its attendant possibilities, from hurricanes to tsunamis. Island nations are not the only ones who watch the oceans with a wary eye. Bangladesh, a low-lying mainland country squeezed between India to the west and Myanmar to the east (formerly Burma), stares down the funnel of the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, and has suffered almost unimaginable loss of life from ocean-related catastrophes. In 1970, a hurricane bore down the Bay of Bengal, pushing a wall of water before it that inundated coastal areas and resulted in the deaths of over 150,000 people. It happened again in 1991, killing over 130,000 people ("Top Ten Deadliest World Hurricanes since 1900" About.com). Scientists estimate that a 1 meter rise in sea level (20 years or less at current rates) will inundate half of Bangladesh's rice paddies - its main food source. Bangladesh is a populous country; it is hard to imagine millions of refugees fleeing into neighboring south Asian countries without serious political and economic repercussions.

But the political implications of changing environmental conditions are already apparent. Just recently, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pointed out that the conflict in Darfur, Sudan is traceable, in part, to the consequences of a changing climate. Beginning in the early 1980s, the rains in southern Sudan began to fail. Scientists have linked a nearly 40% drop in precipitation to rising temperatures in the Indian Ocean, which in turn altered the heretofore reliable Monsoons. According to the Secretary General:

It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought. Until then, Arab nomadic herders had lived amicably with settled farmers. A recent Atlantic Monthly article by Stephan Faris describes how black farmers would welcome herders as they crisscrossed the land, grazing their camels and sharing wells. But once the rains stopped, farmers fenced their land for fear it would be ruined by the passing herds. For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out. By 2003, it evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today.

Since 2003, at least 200,000 people have died in the Darfur as a direct result of the conflict. Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist, argues that a similar set of environmental circumstances can be implicated in the political upheaval and violence in Somalia, the Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso ("A Climate Culprit in Darfur," Ban Ki Moon, Washington Post, 06/16/2007).

Of course, it seems easy enough to write off such calamities to the economic and political backwardness of these third world ... excuse me ... developing nations. In expert terms, we might say that their vulnerability is coupled with low resilience to disasters and emergencies. However, the resilience of the wealthier, developed nations (i.e., us) to environmental changes and emergencies is not so assured. Again, water - either too little to too much - plays a recurring role. Between 1930 and 1939, a series of dust storms devastated the American and Canadian prairie lands as a result of a severe drought coupled with decades of ecologically destructive farming practices. Millions of tons of rich Great Plains soil was blown away and permanently lost. Whole communities were buried, and clouds of dust blackened skies all the way to Chicago. Worse, this partly-natural, partly-human created ecological disaster happened in the immediate wake of the great stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. This ecological and economic disaster forced over 300,000 impoverished Americans - environmental and economic refugees - to flee in a mass migration from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and other affected states. The cultural and economic landscape of the country, not to mention so many tens of thousands of families, were permanently altered.

Nearly 70 years later, the country's resiliency seems to have improved very little, if at all. In August 2005, the Gulf Coast was ravaged by one of the most intense hurricane seasons on record. The one-two punch of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, in particular, drowned New Orleans and other coastal communities, killing over 1,300 people and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to places as far away as Cape Cod, Massachusetts. By some estimates, the exodus of Americans in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita may have been the largest in American history. The insurance industry has paid out over $50 billion, though this is only a small fraction of the true cost (and many would argue that the insurance industry got off criminally cheap). Sadly but unsurprisingly, the poor and marginalized suffered most in this disaster. African-Americans, the elderly, and others with access to less resources suffered higher rates of death, injury and displacement. It turns out that not owning a car, being able to drive, or having adequate private property insurance is a mortal liability. It is hard to grasp the magnitude of this modern catastrophe that drowned a major American city, caused an unprecedented movement of the country's population, and further impoverished an entire region for who knows how long. Whether or not one believes that these hurricanes can be attributed directly to global climate change, it is clear that the U.S. - the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth - is not as resilient as it needs to be.

The Bush Administration and other vocal opponents have been forced to acknowledge the reality of global climate change, or at least the necessity to prepare for such a catastrophic possibility ("On Warming, Bush Vows U.S. 'Will Do Its Part'," Washington Post 09/29/2007). Nevertheless, the President continues to warn that any "real solution" to climate change will have to be done in a way that does not jeopardize the economy. But climate change is about the economy because it's about the welfare of people - including Americans.

Global climate change has serious consequences for people and society. This point seems to get lost in debates about "the environment," as if "the environment" was something "out there." However, we are as much a part of our environment as birds, bees and bunny rabbits. More importantly, we are just as dependent on the proper functioning of the earth as every other living thing on the planet. There may be an earth without humans, but there are no humans without a hospitable earth. Properly managing and protecting 'the environment' is really about protecting ourselves and our interests, quite apart from aesthetic or intrinsic values in 'nature.' The crusade to save the planet is a crusade to save ourselves.

To help search for [NAME/ENTITY] click here ...

In 1997, the folks at SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) announced the launch of the SETI@home project - an effort to engage the public, literally, in the search for technically advanced alien life. By simply downloading an attractive screen saver, individuals could donate the spare computational power of their idle computers, creating a distributed, virtual supercomputer, reducing the money and time spent by scientists, and increasing the chances of detecting an extraterrestrial radio transmission. To date, some 6 million individuals from almost every country on the planet have participated, creating in effect the largest coordinated computational effort in human history. SETI@home has spawned successful imitations on the search for cures for cancer (folding@home), modeling of climate change (climateprediction.net), and others (see "Searching for E.T. and the Cure for Cancer" Planetary Society May/June 2007).

In 2007, a similar effort is unfolding. On Monday, September 3, 2007, wealthy adventurer Steve Fossett was reported missing after failing to return to an airstrip at a southern Nevada ranch while piloting a light aircraft. He was looking for a dry lake bed where he could attempt to break the world land speed record. You might know Mr. Fossett from his other high profile stunts: first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in either a plane or a balloon, swimming across the English Channel, running marathons and climbing the highest peaks on six continents. As Nevada authorities and search and rescue teams mobilized, Fossett's billionaire friend, Richard Branson, asked another friend at Google if it was possible to use the imagery of Google Earth to search for the missing aviator. Many people were surprised to learn (interesting in itself) that Google Earth's planetary imagery is not 'real-time' and that many images may be 3 or more years out of date. Moreover, Google does not collect the imagery itself, but rather purchases it from a variety of other sources. However, at Branson's request, Google turned around and shelled out at least $100,000 to purchase up-to-the-minute imagery of the Nevada desert from two companies (GeoEye and DigitalGlobe) that maintain commercial satellites that acquire high resolution imagery of Earth on a daily basis. But it didn't stop there. Google passed the imagery to Amazon.com, whose online tool Mechanical Turk allows thousands of people to share the job of combing through the aerial and satellite imagery in search of Steve Fossett. When you arrive at Amazon.com's dedicated Steve Fossett search site, you are greeted with the message "To help search for Steve Fossett click here," and presented with sample images and instructions on how to engage in the search. According to Steve Cohen, coordinator of Amazon's search site, "thousands of people" have signed up to participate ("Internet Users Join Search for Steve Fossett" NPR 09/12/07; "With Web's Help, the World Joins Search for Fossett" Washington Post 09/14/07).

The editors at Directions Magazine, a geospatial industry news source, examined the Steve Fossett search as a "teachable moment" in a recent podcast - focusing on the education of the wider public on the variety of technologies employed in this endeavor (from aerial and satellite pictures to hyperspectral imagery). As they describe it, this effort represents a convergence of technologies - Internet and geospatial. This is indeed significant - there is no bigger or more important trend in geospatial technology than its co-evolution with the Internet. However, I would argue that there is more to these phenomena than simply technological evolution. We are increasingly seeing the potential of combining massively distributed resources (i.e., Internet and computers and open source software) with a widespread willingness of both expert and non-experts to volunteer their time and energy and resources for the greater good (however that might be defined). Before Steve Fossett, there was Hurricane Katrina. In the chaotic aftermath of the August 2005 hurricane events that devastated the Gulf Coast (don't forget Hurricanes Rita and Wilma), a general call went out for GIS experts to bring their laptops to the disaster zone to aid in search and rescue and recovery. So many answered the call that most had to be thanked and turned away. As it became evident that federal and state government efforts would fall short in aiding individuals, faculty and students at Louisiana State University's Geography department took the initiative. At the same time, non-experts stepped up and used existing free tools, such as Google Maps, to create online resources to help post timely information about specific locations affected by the storm - news by people in the area for people in the area (see http://www.scipionus.com/).

In December, Michael Goodchild - the GIS deity who resides at UC Santa Barbara - will convene a specialist meeting of hand picked experts to discuss what Goodchild calls "volunteered sources" - "a flood of new web services and other digital sources ... that can potentially provide rich, abundant, and timely flows of geographic and geo-referenced information." Goodchild suggests a number of important questions, including the motivation of individuals to provide georeferenced data publicly and the potential of combining advanced Internet technology with human brain power. It is likely that the experts will be most fascinated with the technological implications, but I think it is equally important to recognize the social significance of so many people's readiness to volunteer their time and resources, as well as the power of combining technology with collective will.

As of this posting, the search for Steve Fossett has led to the discovery of 8 previously undiscovered planes that have crashed in the area over the years, but not the principal target himself. We can only hope that the search for extraterrestrial life will have such collateral success.

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