"disaster Research Network"

https://news.rpi.edu/content/2019/0...ster-research-network-aims-advance-innovation


Good morning all,

Article about research university establishing the OSEEER - Operations and Systems Engineering Extreme Event Research Network. This also involves improving societal well-being.

My view is that disaster origins and consequences are understood. The headache is the - funding - for the needed improvements.

 

Care to elaborate further on it? I live in disaster prone country where mother nature really love redecorating the landscape with people on it (kinda routine here) and I also have access to updated seismic data and other things

 

Good morning Varuna,

I have no knowledge of this research university nor this new engineering program; only what I read in the article I linked.

My point is still that our institutions - governmental, private sector business, NGOs, and related, have the knowledge and experience. What is missing is the funding.

https://www.adrc.asia/countryreport/SGP/SGPeng98/index.html This is Singapore's program for it's small city-state nation. At link's "8." is their international cooperation program. This program tells of the organization and functions but NOT the financial arrangements to purchase, for example, seismic instruments on buoys, rescue aircraft, portable medical clinics with supplies, relocation shelters and all the rest.

It's about the same in the US. Communications networks for emergencies are in high development and refinement. Yet, the cities and counties cannot afford to get them. The US has excellent aircraft but the roads need some work.

A good example for a summary: Relocating the national capitol of Indonesia from JKT to Borneo is less about skilled members of organizations and more so about the money.

Not too much is new under the Sun.

 

https://ahacentre.org/

Good morning Varuna,

I'm not 100% organized if I even need to say this........

Above link is to ASEAN's Community Centre (Attn: American members: British English spelling used) For Humanitarian Assistance., shortened to AHA Centre. Believe it's Jakarta-based.

Besides AHA Centre and the Singapore link I provided earlier this AM, a site good for surfing around is the UN's "Relief Web" - forgot URL address.

For ALL these organizations' programs and projects, the best survival kit for them: large duffel bags of money !

 

https://news.usc.edu/160342/disaster-preparedness-usc-viterbi-preemptive-program/

Good morning all,

Above link relates to this initial thread's theme.

Disaster preparedness means learning from the past. The specifics: PREEMPTIVE Advanced Studies Institute.

The lead picture illustrates only 1 wearing a hat. The students have not yet taken the course on clothing and PPE.

I believe the term "cross cultural exchange" means vacation / holiday.

For just too long we've been neglecting natural hazards responses with a cultural context. It's the cultural context that determines revived respiration and the other vital signs.

No research needed in southern California and Connecticut ?

Pluket, Thailand visits not needed to understand a "tsunamis colossal destruction".

If economic and cultural contexts are of equal importance, then "greater investment" in infrastructure would not be as important.

It would be just super if this NSF grant changed the overseas research locations to:
Gaza Strip
Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas
Jamu-Kashmir
Goma, DR Congo
Holy city of Qom, Iran

 

Any institution under ASEAN banner is more of a. . . . coordination center (for lack of a better term) unlike EU where resources were pooled together. Even in the so-called "Joint Patrol" every member state merely patrolling in their own side of the border thus reducing the effectiveness of the said patrol in some cases.

IMO One of the most important aspect of preparedness is educating the public regarding the risk & mitigation of disaster and it doesn't take a lot of money (for a any nation state) to educate their public on it.

The problem with those disaster coordination center thingy is, although they do provide accurate & updated information / data, the majority of public doesn't know how to read them, and when the public misinterpreted the information there are 2 possibility of outcome, either negligence or panic, neither of them is any good.
For example even myself had recently suffer from a bad planning due to negligence, and end up with a bit of panic myself.

https://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=902032

 

It mostly politic. In this case to move the capital as far away from those Arabs while keeping it safe from mother nature redecoration effort.

 

Good evening Varuna,

Of course, information-sharing is a key feature of the ASEAN centers. Here, FEMA and the Federal health-care equivalents to FEMA are for both coordination and providing supplies and equipment when the states run low and request Federal assistance. Much politics involved.

Here in the US, educating the public has proved a failure. Those members of the public seeking disaster prep info will get it regardless of governmental programs. Those not caring about disaster prep are still subsidized by the public sector.

I consider the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of preparedness to be education of the kids in school - as part of their curriculum. Would also add the benefits for the outside school activities such as band practice and sports to be focused to emergency preparedness. Organizations like the Scouts and 4-H Clubs were successful. Much, however, has recently changed.

...

Interesting info re the capital relocation. Thank you. I'm guessing that Jakarta sinking, like New Orleans here, helps generate the needed funds for the move.

 

Around here it is the opposite. The gov't somehow managed (albeit not by much) to educate people on the need to be aware of potential natural disaster by going door-to-door and occasionally running an evacuation drill, but we fail, miserably in educating trough education system. The main contributing factor in the failure to execute it in school environment is because the teachers themself are clueless on the subject, and adding disaster preparedness in the education curriculum takes at least 10 years and no small amount of political will.

I personally always try to casually "educate" other people around me on the need to be aware of potential natural disaster and mitigation, however it's very difficult concept to grabs when everyone believed they can always bugging out to the nearest unaffected city

The official narrative is because Jakarta is sinking and overcrowded (population is over 10 million) which is true, however just like any other things around here it is always "the unspoken" part that really matter. One thing for sure companies such as Rheinmetall, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, SAAB, etc are very happy with the move (more contracts for them)

 

The problem with disaster programs is that they are run by politicians...Need I say more? ... I will anyway... The next problem with them is they get Liberal academics that have almost no contact with the REAL world to do the studies and make recommendations. I've watched this over and over. When that oil platform caught fire what did the politicians do?
They got a Nobel prize-winning physicist to handle it. I doubt that he had EVER even seen an oil field much less an offshore rig. that entire thing was a cluster "foul-up". The idiots still don't know where all the oil went.

If they wanted to plan an evacuation they would probably put a PHD English Lit Professor Or a big name Biologist in charge of the study and he would not allow any civil engineers to be a part of it. That is just the way it goes.

 

Good morning TexDanm,

Exactly ! So true.

Disaster programs get "taken over" by the academics - no need to add the word "liberal"; it's inherent and obvious.

Now, for some more bad news for our country: These fools are also deficient in their subjects like English literature. American literature is treated like it doesn't exist.

Some years ago, I joined a Virginia emergency type of organization. The first notice I received from them after paying my annual dues was "Call For Papers".

 

I don't have any more faith in Academia than most of the members here. My first question was where will this research go? I'm sure the findings or results will be published. Will they go to the National Science Foundation? Will they get down to the local level where there are boots on the ground that need the information? Who gets the results?

I will say that if Rensselaer is running it they have the BIG brains involved. It is a private institution that has always been geared toward science and technology. They are ranked in the top 50 schools in the country and in the top 5% in Engineering and Physics. There are no slouches there.

 

Good morning Morgan,

Yes, the research gets published and it goes all over. FEMA gets material pertinent to the FEMA mission.

The research does filter down to the boots on the ground. I have a pub account with FEMA and one of the medical agencies. It's all less about knowledge made available and new enhancements such as commo systems. It's about the funding.

The space shots starting in the 1960s produced great info and products. For example, the company ILC Dover, One Moonwalker Road, Frederia, Delaware, developed the astronauts' space suits and a spinoff was the individual's smoke evacuation mask. Their model SCape CBRN 30 escape hood I consider the best in the market for private citizens to buy. It is relatively expensive. Again: the funding. Downstream on the timeline they'll probably be affordable for middle America but not yet.

Related:

I envisioned / still do the active forum participants establish area groups and annually some of the meet in person. A couple of weeks ago near Ashville, North Carolina was a/the prepper camp/seminars. This was at Saluda, North Carolina Orchard Lake area. They've got paved roads, the rural electrification program is in place and the locals are smarter than the Ocrecoke Island, N.C. population.

I've atttended these "get-togethers" and bring boxes of pubs on survival issues, mental health maintenance, glossy laminated type charts of ticks. Also gave out my handouts inadvertently collected over the year eg space blankets, similiar sized waterproof pouches, loads of mini size soaps for field use, etc, etc. Of course other members of our group gave me stuff. I once returned here with my zombie comic books to teach children (for the emergency shelter) prep than Carter has ...... dictator's teaching at his Sunday school.

Some material is not appropriate for the web. Meetings are where real stuff is accomplished. This is even so for prepper camps like I mention here (https://www.prep.com) Saluda, N.C. The coffee breaks and the ice tea breaks is where knowledge is acquired. Making lasting contacts is a force multiplier.

Just decided to add a closing comment; The research pubs going public are sometimes "sanitized" for the public. The boots on the ground folks know the specifics.

 

Good to know it gets where it will be best used.

 

Good afternoon all,

Speaking of American literature - themed to the prepper community in some way, ...

Consider:

"Life on the Mississippi" by steamboat pilot Mark Twain
"The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner (1929)
"The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe
"In a Bar of a Tokyo Hotel" (1969) and "Small Craft Warnings" (1973) by Tennessee Williams
"All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren. I forgot much of this -except for "The Raven"-but guessing from a fading memory that this is the one with the row boat and the water moccasins in boat but did not attack person.

The disaster professors are like the politicians and politicos. The rest of 'em are also in the same category.

 

My issue with most of these "research" documents that I've come across and read, be they DoD, FEMA, private think tank, govt funded academic research, etc.. is that they are written by eggheads, in egghead, for eggheads. It's a form of mental masturbation for them to get off on their "work" Much of it is more about the bureaucracy and setting up the hurdles and gates to things and less focused on actual action plans and useful info for on the ground. That OSEER program, I read "justifying and funding academic researcher positions that they can spin around for the next 20-40 years in order to ride out a career". Academia is like dealing with their big brother the govt. they take 20x longer and 1000x the cost to produce "something" that is incomplete, inconclusive, or often already a known quantity. Sort of to Tex's point about asking an egghead who can't tell you the difference between a bit and a derrick to explain the fine points of throwing chain.

Pragmatist, I know your all about the public (govt) approach and you mention the cost and buying gear and supplies. So where does that "funding" inevitably come from? Theft. Theft from you and I and every other tax payer as we are robbed of our skills and work thru taxation so 'they' can claim they have "revenue" to apply to whatever puddle of the swamp they wish to dump it in. Sorry, but any excuse for the govt to take, much less take more, I'm totally against. I really don't need them sending my money thru back channels to some university or institution via funding and grants to prop up some academic type that can't survive outside the false world that is academia. As the saying goes, Those who can, do, those who can't, teach.

This is about individual responsibility. I'm sorry but if a person isn't smart enough, or switched on enough to think ahead about their own safety and that of their family, well that's evolution. the herd gets thinned. and as to the effectiveness of govt responding to issues, I mean do we need to look any further than Katrina, "Super storm Sandy" or hurricane Maria. Maria and Puerto Rico are a prime example of when things are handled by govt vs private. Look at the crime and corruption committed by those with the govt and the waste and destruction of precious needed supplies. Look at the waste that also happened due to shear incompetence of govt bureaucrats.

 

Good morning Country Guy,

We're definitely in the same camp.

2 mentioned points do require refinement.

All taxes are not theft. I understand you're discussing the theft aspect of the pool of money. Taxes are the glue of civilization and civilization is relatively new. It allows for the specialization of labor; some weed the garden, some stand watch 24/7 on the walls, some carry the barley to the silo. Again, we're in the same camp along with TexDan and the others who recognize what's going on.

The other point;

Good people from the Nile to the Yangstze to the Mississippi, get hurt, injured, born with ailments, age along with infirmities, get captured by barbarians, ... . Political leadership determines the line and band between individual responsibility and the collective requirements.

You're completely correct. Our national problem is not hurricanes or tornadoes or droughts. It is quality political leadership.

Much of the incompetent government bureaucrats and the academics ...... and the many warriors in the Pentagon who never got sweaty in their comfortable careers ...

My favorite toast from my olden times:

"The United States - bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on the south by the procession of the equinoxes, on the east by the primeval chaos and on the west by the day of Judgment."

John Fiske, 1842 - 1901

We've got a lot of work to do and I do believe we're accomplishing something .