Thinking ahead: The 2nd half of the chessboard

There is a story that the inventor of chess was offered the chance to name his reward by the ruler of his country (Persia or India – the origins are imprecise) he chose to have a single grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, 2 on the 2nd square and 4 on the next and so on doubling each time.  By the time you are halfway across the square, the rice amounts to about 100,000 kg, a large amount indeed.  However, the rice on the 2nd half of the chessboard rapidly rises to a pile higher than Everest and more than 1,000 times annual global rice production. Indeed the 1st square of the 2nd half of the chessboard contains more rice than all of the 1st half of the board.

Technology has already transformed our lives in many ways.  I remember the IBM engineers carrying their mobile phones. It came in a case and weighed several kilos. Now, many of us have smart phones that do a wondrous selection of things that was unimaginable even 10 years ago.  I once worked in a “Computer Department” and now computers are everywhere, indeed that smart phone has more computer power, memory and storage than the mainframe computer that used to run all our banking systems when I started work.

But this is only the beginning of the computer age. What is about to happen may be even more mind boggling than what has already occurred.  Moore’s Law states that computing power doubles every 2 years and this has remained true since the observation was first made in 1965.  This is often quoted but little thought about. This means that the computing power available in 2015 will be double that of this year, and by 2017 doubled again and so on. We are on that chessboard, and now we are starting to enter the 2nd half of the chessboard.

What does this mean in practice? One thing it means is great uncertainty as it becomes increasingly difficult to keep abreast of the technical changes and the technological impacts of these changes.  Let us consider the mobile phone again.  I have already seen working devices that no longer come in the form of a handset. An ear piece and a lapel mike are linked wirelessly to the transmitter/receiver in a pocket. You can speak to the device to make calls, and use a keyboard displayed by a mini-projector onto your hand if you need to make calls or send text messages.  The mobile phone as we currently know it, will disappear. That’s significant if you are Samsung, Apple and the like.

What about cars? Self-drive cars are already under trial and are sharing roads with real drivers. So why not self-drive delivery vehicles? You simply load the vehicle, programme its destination and away it goes. What implications does this have? White van man, lorry drivers, courier services could all be shedding large numbers of jobs. What are the legal implications if there is an accident? What contingency plans should the operator have for failures such as GPS being affected by a Coronal Mass Ejection from the sun (see previous blogs)? When the vehicle arrives at its destination, does a robot then carry the goods to the householder?

Well, we cannot be certain about these changes, but we can say that they will challenge every part of our lives and in ways that we cannot yet envisage. So next time someone talks to you about horizon scanning, think about this: we are just entering the 2nd half of the chessboard.

Exploding pavements

One might have thought that your risk register covered everything, but what about exploding pavements?  One man was rather taken by surprise when walking past a shop, as the pavement exploded where he had just been walking. Those of you in London may have read about this in the Evening Standard, but otherwise it did not make the news.

You can imagine the consternation that this might cause if it occurred outside your office. It turns out that the cause was some power cables under the pavement had exploded.

A similar problem occurred to a client of mine in the Netherlands.  The exploding cables also took out the power to their offices and was immediately attended by the emergency services. Colleagues across the street looked on, not knowing what had occurred, but knowing that there was a major emergency right outside the nursery looking after their children.  You can imagine their concerns as they worried about an explosion, and possible terrorism, right by their pre-school children. Of course, they were re-assured when they discovered the true cause.

So what do we learn? One: power failures might be spectacular and could even be life threatening. Two: communication to interested parties is important from the outset.

Resilient Cities, John Snow and Mapping

An exhibition has opened in London to celebrate 200 years since the birth of John Snow (1813-1858).  A man who’s name is more recently associated with a famous English fast bowler and a current TV News reader, John Snow was famous in his own time for pioneering anaesthesia.  He was the first to be appointed to attend Queen Victoria, wrote the first text book on anaesthesia and pioneered the first inhalator.

For those of us with an interest in resilient cities, his fame relates to his work on Cholera.  In Victorian London, Cholera was a terrifying disease that swept through the population from time to time.  You could feel sick in the morning and be dead by nightfall, and there was no effective medical intervention.  Its cause was thought to be through air borne transmission related to the foul smells of the developing City.  It was recently described as the AIDS, H5N1 and Corona virus all combined and of its day.

In 1854 a further outbreak occurred in Soho and this is where John Snow enters the story.  He mapped the disease in Soho and a similar outbreak in South London.  He concluded that this was water borne and not air borne, and that the source of the outbreak was the pump from which everyone obtained their water.  He is famous for saying that the outbreak could be stopped by removing the handle.  Now this was done, despite understandable opposition from those deprived of their source of fresh water, and the disease duly halted.

This story was related at Snow’s funeral by his good friend and in 1883 the bacteria were discovered in water that caused this disease, final proof of John Snow’s theory.  When the US needed a text book to start their work on public health, the book started with the story of John Snow.

To this day, the basics of John Snow’s argument are still key to building resilient cities – i.e. clean water and clean housing.  London still benefits from the Victorian sewers and clean water that transformed public health more than anything before or since. But it is a story and whilst the key facts are correct, the reality is more complicated and complex with many more actors involved.  Nonetheless, we should celebrate John Snow for what he was and did achieve and take him to represent the many others that also contributed.  You can learn more by attending the exhibition featuring his original maps at the London School of Tropical Medicine (see http://bit.ly/12LoMI1) and having a drink in the John Snow pub at 39 Broadwick Street, London, W1F 9QJ, outside of which is a pink slab that marks the location of the pump whose handle was so famously removed.

UXB – is it on your risk register?

Unexploded bombs (UXB) left over from past conflicts should appear on every organizations’ risk register, but I wonder how often they actually feature.  In London they are still discovered regularly during building works, but there are many areas of Britain where they can still be found.  It is usually when building works are being undertaken, that a previously undisturbed bomb is found.

Last week, a similar experience affected commuters in Berlin.  In this case a 100kg Russian bomb was uncovered as bomb disposal experts checked a construction site near the Hauptbahnhof. Berlin’s main station was closed, roads cordoned off and commuters disrupted as the experts carefully defused the bomb.  840 people were evacuated from the surrounding area.  Clearly any business nearby will have suffered at least a little disruption to its day.

Whilst bombs are usually defused successfully, this is not always the case.  A team of 3 bomb disposal experts were killed in Germany in June 2010 when the bomb exploded – see http://bit.ly/12yKqzc. Such cases are rare but of course, even more disruptive to those nearby.

It is therefore worth considering whether your work location is near to bombing targets and to monitor any planned construction activity around you.  And most of all, consider what you will do to keep staff safe in such circumstances, whether evacuating the building or moving to a place of safety inside.  Having considered safety first, consider what impact this will have your business and whether your existing strategies are sufficient to deal with the risk – and obviously modify and update these if necessary.

Foot and Mouth – improving societal resilience

In 2001 the UK experienced an outbreak of foot and mouth, a disease that affects farm livestock, mostly cattle, pigs and sheep.  The only control available was slaughter and the incineration of the carcass. In 2001 this resulted in pyres of burning cattle and sheep around the affected areas, an unwelcome pall of smoke, an accompanying smell and movement restrictions on vehicles and walkers in some of Britain’s loveliest countryside.  The farmers involved suffered considerably and the tourist industry suffered even more.  The UK Government spent £8bn slaughtering 6 million animals.

Last month, some good news was announced that may consign such images to the past.  Vaccination has long been considered as the obvious control for foot and mouth but the key problem is that vaccinated cattle produce the same anti-bodies as infected cattle and it is not possible to distinguish them.  When cattle are therefore tested when being moved – say from farmer to farmer or from the UK to another country – it cannot be shown whether they are infected or vaccinated.

Now this has changed, as a synthetic vaccine has been developed in the UK which will allow the cattle to produce antibodies to prevent the disease but without the full spectrum of antibodies of infected animals.  This allows testers to distinguish between infected and immunised animals.  This synthetic vaccine also has the advantage of being cheaper and easier to make.

Unfortunately this is not the end of foot and mouth just yet, as like many diseases it comes in several forms and this synthetic vaccine only works against one of the seven forms of foot and mouth.  However, the principle can be extended to the other forms and should provide sound defence against the commonest types. The necessary testing and licencing could also take up to 7 years, so although this is a significant advance, the risk of foot and mouth will remain for some years to come.  Indeed, a major outbreak occurred in Japan and South Korea in 2010 and continued vigilance will be needed – but it is good to know that a longer term solution is now coming into view.