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Safety, security and preparedness
Saturday 10 October 2015
Monday 7 September 2015
What do immigrants carry with them.
I have tried
to do research about the effectiveness of emergency preparedness. This is
however very hard to since this is very hard to determine what is effective,
what isn’t and how to generate or find statistics.
What I have
done is check the number of people dying after a mayor incident. Assuming an
emergency bag is a response type of action, not a mitigation tool I assumed for
my little research that an emergency bag is not a tool that prevents dead
during a incident.
Very few
people die after a mayor event. Even when not prepared people can generally
survive long enough until help arrives. Obviously getting cold, dehydrated and hungry
isn’t nice. But very few people die of it after an incident. The step from
mayor incident to relief is not nice, but in the vast majority of cases not
lethal.
In the
emergency preparedness community, there is a lot of talk of the gear we might
need in an emergency or when we flee for something. There is even talk about
the ‘I’m never coming home bag’ (Acronym: ‘INCH bag’). Generally heavy and
massive bags, because people think they will need to bring everything they will
every need on their backs. As a hiker and mountaineer, it’s easy to see why
that would not work. Big heavy bags, means you are slower, less manoeuvrable, tiring
a lot quicker and it uses a lot of calories. As a mountaineer I carry a lot
less weight than some people do in there ‘INCH’ bag and still manage to survive
pretty bad weather condition.
What do
people in real life bring? The refugee crisis in Europe gives us a look at what
people bring. With hazardous border crossings, from climbing fences, running
away from border guards, to going by boat and packing as light as possible (or
ditch stuff) on boats, because people smugglers want to pack as many people as
possible on a boat.
Some real
life examples from the immigrants:
Surprisingly
little is carried and they are generally not shelter, food and water independent.
Does this matter? Just like any emergency situation, there are some kind of
effort by governments, NGO’s or just volunteers that will help with this. In
the case of the immigrants the way to Europe is through functional countries,
where they can buy food, water and shelter or depend on government or charity.
think survival able, but certainly not comfortable.
So what is
the point of this article. Well primarily that you do not need much to survive.
I’m not saying that carrying as little as the refugees, but carrying 50+ pounds
‘INCH’ bags what some propose is just crazy. Find a middle ground in
weight/size versus mobility. The way is to figure out what you can do without,
not with what might come in handy.
Labels:
bug out bag,
emergency,
INCH,
prepardness,
refugee
Monday 4 May 2015
Disaster rescue and recovery; donations
The Nepal
disaster sparks up lots of conversation of people willing to help. Some just
donate to large recovery organisations like the red cross, some want to send money
to small local charity, others want to fly over and help. Well people time for
a reality check.
In everyday
life big company’s often use the just in time (JIT) method. Manufacturing and
shipping items just in time, when and where it is needed. Having items laying
in storage and transit it just and waste of space and resources being tied up.
This makes everything more flexible and easier to adjust to what is needed,
while minimizing of wasted time and resources.
A disaster
area generally has lots of logical challenges. Logical workers might not show
up (dead, injured, taking care of loved once or simply not able to get to
work), road are blocked, equipment and buildings might be damaged or lost. Then
there is a huge amount of stuff send to these areas. Clogging up at the roads
and airports. This makes just in time delivery even more important than ever
before. Items send must be what is needed right then, with proper equipment and
personnel to train and supply people with the right items. Items that are most
needed are the ones that are effective in giving the aid that is needed with
minimum spend resources on site.
But the
reality is that a lot of people and organisations don’t send the right things,
send things at the wrong time or just send things without thinking about
logistics. If you fly items in, but arranged nobody to do something with it, it
will just sit there. Unsolicited help is not help. There are no surplus personnel
waiting for it, if you did not arrange them. This means either send it back or
just shove it aside to make space on the tarmac. Once pushed off the tarmac it
will probably degrade and become useless. With other words, people fly things
in, get shoved aside, spoils and become a big pile of garbage. Spending money, clogging
chock points and creating garbage.
Items send
to disaster area need to be kept low in required resources and personnel. For
instance, bottled water is very resource and labour intensive product and creates
lots of trash. Pallet of water need to put in to trucks, put in distribution
sites, people need to manage and secure (yes security is a mayor factor) these sites and every single bottle needs to be
brought there. Using vehicles, drivers, fuel and road capacity. These resources
are in high demand, so using less of them is good. The alternative would be a water
purification unit (many different sizes available), If there are water sources
nearby. Once delivered on sight, it only requires very little supplies and
resources to keep going.
Donated
items by individuals are another class of resource intense ‘aid’. People
donating their old stuff to charity and expect them to be donated to victims of
a disaster. The problem with donating stuff is sorting useless stuff (a lot of
useless stuff) from useful stuff, sort them in categories, sizes, clean them and
bag them. If you need to get things done now, this is not a realistic option.
It takes lots of time and lots of volunteers to do this.
Items also
need to be the appropriate for the area. Don’t send pork to Jewish or Muslim
communities. Don’t send winter coats to warm areas. Don’t send items which won’t
work in those countries (wrong sockets and voltage for electrical devices). Don’t
send food that need extensive cooking, when people houses are destroyed.
The most
effective donations are cash, which are spend on buying supplies in and nearby
the disaster area. You won’t compete with the local market, you stimulate the
economic (helps the economic recovery) items are already nearby and require
little transportation, items are familiar to the locals and no customs issues.
Disaster rescue and recovery; helping
Once a
disaster strike like Nepal recently, many people want to go there to help. Sometimes that’s not an issue. I used to work
for a fire department which supplies people for the national urban search and
rescue unit. So I know some of my former co-workers were send to Nepal. They
are trained and have their logistics done, so no worries there. But what about
the average Joe who want to fly over to help?
There are a
few things to consider, why would you go to a disaster area to help. Is it your
feel good trip or because you can actually do something useful? People might
say they want to do something useful but in practise are not.
To help in
a disaster area, you first need to make sure you are not using their resources.
People don’t have a place to sleep, no food and water and you fly in and don’t
have those things there either? Well maybe you should take care of that first.
If you have to take their shelter, water and food, then you are using resources
the victims need. Meaning you are not helping, but you are a burden.
Then the
second question, what are you going to do there? If you do not have specialist
skills and knowledge which is needed, then the only thing you can provide is
helping numbers and muscle. But there generally is enough numbers and muscle.
So why compete with the locals. The locals speak the language, know the area,
known the local customs and are in general more useful. It’s the same issue I mentioned
when people go to Africa to help build a school. You are not helping, but
competing with the locals. They are poor, but have enough people. So sending
more people to volunteer for work, is the worst thing you can do. Send money
and hire a local professional is probably cheaper than your plane ticket and if
you are not trained, they will also perform a better job. Their income will
also further boost the local economy. The same goes with disaster relief. Give
jobs to locals to help normalise there situation and there for indirectly boost
the economy there.
Disaster
recovery is a profession. It requires training to get the right skills and
local knowledge. If you do not know the local customs, do not know the culture
and language you probably doing more harm than good. Remember It’s not about
you. Disaster recovery is about the victims.
Disaster rescue and recovery; Different units, different uses.
With the Nepal
disaster there are some critics, who argue about how emergency personnel are
being used in the post disaster rescue and recovery efforts. Why are mountaineers
getting rescued from the mountains, while there are people trapped in collapsed
houses. Why are those foreign mountaineers getting help but the mountain
village aren’t.
Well let’s
get something clear. Rescue units are not trained to do every type of rescue. Different
units are trained and equipped for different kind of jobs. Just look at what
the different types of firefighters; There are structural fire fighters, forest
fire fighters, technical rescue (road traffic collisions), hazardous material specialists,
rescue divers, height rescue, etc. Although most fire fighters are trained to
fight fire, the specialist jobs are generally only done by a smaller selection
of fire fighters with specialist training and equipment.
Mountains
rescue units are trained to save people from mountains. They are trained and
equipped for just that. Mountaineering skills, specialist rope skills and improvisation
(weight is a big issue when climbing). Urban search and rescue is a completely different
type of unit. They need to find and reach people buried in (concrete) rubble,
meaning working with specialist jacks, equipment to saw though rebar, stabilizing
structured, etc. Totally different training and equipment. Using one unit to do
the job of the other is letting people do things they have no clue about with
the wrong equipment.
Then there
is another difference; there are rescue units and there is recovery organisations.
Rescue units are there only to rescue people; getting people safely out and to
a safe location. Then there are organisations which focus on recovery. Recovery
is making sure thing getting back to normal. Generally by providing basic necessity;
shelter (tents), food, water, hygiene and basic medical services. Then the next
step of getting things back to normal. These are obviously different from
rescue units. Rescue units might leave surplus equipment and supplies when they
leave, but they don’t provide more recovery wise than that.
So when
people are arguing about rescuing mountaineers (mountain rescue units), but
villages not receiving aid (recovery), they just don’t realist these a totally different
units and organisations. It’s easy to judge, but unless you are
schooled/trained in emergency management, you might need to take a step back
and stop criticizing the professionals.
Disaster rescue and recovery; local rescue personnel.
The earthquake
in Nepal is showing how most large scale disasters happen. Here are a few
posts/rants about disaster rescue and recovery.
What
happens after a disaster is not as easy as many thinks. Many people reaction it
so send stuff or go there to help. Well it’s really not that easy. Many often
are critical about the local authorities not helping enough at the beginning,
but that is just unrealistic expectations.
Emergency personnel
are not in surplus supply. Just look at a everyday mayor structural fire. One
district generally can’t field enough equipment and men power to fight the fire
and have to request assistant from bordering districts. Their bordering
districts might fill in the coverage gap. Other things might happen, so you
still need to make sure there is some reserve. Not a major problem, these large
fire happen, but generally they don’t occur at the same place and certainly not
nearby of each other.
But what if
we add some new challenges in the mix. Emergency personal are just citizens and
often even volunteers. In a mayor disaster they are effected to. Some might be
killed or injured, others have to take care of their direct love ones. Would
you leave your trapped and injured child so you can help others? People often
forget that emergency service personnel are just people. You can’t expect them
to drop everything to save you.
Then there
are logical issues. Communications are generally disrupted, roads are blocked,
the fire stations and emergency equipment storage might be affected. First
priority is generally not rescue, but getting things setup so you can start
with rescue; clear the roads, set up communications and inventory what capacity
the emergency services have left and figuring out what happened and what needs
to be done. With these challenge, don’t expect emergency personal to be everywhere
at the same time, or same day, or days…
In an disaster
you can get help from even further away. One option is to request help from the
army. Most armies have fairly large numbers of personnel and large amount of
equipment. They suffer from the same logical issues. Needing unaffected personnel
and equipment, communications and cleared roads. And more importantly soldiers
are not trained as rescue personnel. Lots of comments from people why the army
isn’t pulling people from collapsed buildings. But last time I checked, most
soldiers are trained to use weapons, not with working with rescue equipment.
Saws to cut rebar and jacks to lift concrete slaps are completely different
tools than a rifle. So the army is generally more suitable for the logics;
clearing roads, building bridges, settings up tents and easy rescue and
recovery work which require numbers and muscles, but not specialist training.
Can we
blame authorities for not able to respond to a disaster to everybody immediately?
Well even the rich western counties won’t be able to field enough equipment and
personal immediately. Many area’s effected by disasters are often very poor.
What do expect them from spending in preparing there emergency services? People
are even saying that you shouldn’t donate money, because the authorities didn’t
respond quickly enough. People are expecting things to be done more quicker than
ever. Unless you spend outrages amounts
of money and resources preparing for a disaster, this will never happen. Not in
poor countries, not in rich countries. Don’t complain if it takes time, it’s just
reality. People are expecting instant gratifications, that might work with some
parts in your life, but certainly not in disaster response and recovery.
Thursday 15 January 2015
Edx Natural disaster course
If you read this blog, you might be interested in the following Edx course:
https://www.edx.org/course/natural-disasters-mcgillx-atoc185x
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https://www.edx.org/course/natural-disasters-mcgillx-atoc185x
It's a MOOC (massive open online course), which is free to follow.
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