it seems to me that what we are witnessing here is a new type of
vulnerability that "developed" socities in particular are susceptible
to. But this is not the only - or even a rare - event of this type. The
loss of power to central Auckland (New Zealand) some years ago, the
partial loss of water to Sydney (Australia) when the water supply was
contaminated with cryptospiridium and the loss of gas to the State of
Victoria (Australia) in 1998 are other examples of "coupled"
networks, with limited (and increasingly limited after the processes of
privatisation) redundancy and back up systems.

It is not just the New World that is at risk in this sense - Britain
last winter suffered major transport system disruption when a few
inches of snow fell and dislocated road traffic, and this summer record
heat has caused train cancellations as rails warp and make usual train
speeds unsafe.

I think that we should be investigating this sort of issue from at
least two points of view. First, how networks rather than independent
and autonomous entities behave and second from the perspective of
complexity theory which raises issues of emergence and the
perdicatbility of one action leading to another.

But this needs to be put in perspective. This most recent power loss in
North America means an increase in risk for many ofthe individuals and
families who are affected. How do people on life support systems cope;
how do hospitals maintain services and so on. There has been no
mention - so far as I can tell from media reports - of who is at risk
and what support they are being given.

Perhaps, finally, this is a classic example of a disaster - where the
capacity of the wider society or of government to provide support is
impacted and reduced because it is itself a victim of the event.

My own experience of managing utility disruption is that it is complex,
fraught and extrremely sensitive politically while at the same time
requiring rapid and definitive solutions to issues that seem to arise
spontaneously and which extend from the personal (how do you
cook/clean/heat/cool without power) to the national (how is industry
or emergency services capability sustained when power is absent).

Philip Buckle



----- Original Message -----
From: Ilan Kelman <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, August 15, 2003 11:23 am
Subject: Blackout

> Yet again we see the impressive vulnerability of our large-scale,
> centralised, integrated systems which are a feature of today's
> society.Despite Y2K, terrorism, previous events, and decades of
> experience in the
> energy industry and risk management, we still end up creating
> situations and
> systems which cause severe, continental-wide crises.  Whether this
> event was
> deliberate, incompetence, a true accident (does that ever exist?),
> or a
> combination, the system itself still has inherent vulnerabilities
> which we
> apparently do not understand and which, perhaps, we are not
> willing to
> invest the resources to tackle properly.
>
> Since local coping mechanisms appear to be implemented across the
> affectedareas, is it perhaps time to consider more localised
> energy systems too?  A
> further advantage would be that having energy production much
> closer to the
> users where possible could perhaps educate people about the economic,
> social, and environmental cost of excessive energy usage, a key
> aspect of
> tackling climate change.
>
> Another question for this list relates to a previous blackout
> which this
> event has again brought to light (pardon the pun).  The Globe and
> Mail, a
> Canadian national newspaper, reports at
>
http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030815.ugrid1/BNStory/F
ront
> that:
> "Yesterday's failure was not the first of its kind. On Aug. 11,
> 1996 --
> almost exactly seven years ago -- a squirrel found its way into a
> grid on
> the U.S. West Coast and knocked out power in nine states and parts of
> Mexico, demonstrating the weaknesses in the system."
>
> Would that event count as a natural disaster?
>
> Best wishes to everyone affected by this event and stay safe
> during it,
> Ilan
>
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