Fil - I think Kari's point was one of perspective, not of problem-solving.
He's pointing to a kind of reverse-engineering by way of critical incident
analysis, that of a critical incident that would be well-known in Japanese
culture. That he knows this critical incident (the 15th century tsunami) and
he's Finnish suggests that this cultural awareness might be a deeply
embedded piece of wisdom in Japanese culture that ought to have affected
decision making.
Kari's not saying this is the only point of reference. But what his
retrieval of an ancient tsunami incident points to is the modern-day
ignoring of deep understanding in their cultural-historical situation. When
you suggest there are "many other factors that influence the process" that
is always the case in a complex system. But what human systems research by
David Woods (OSU), Gary Klein (Naturalistic decision making), Marc Gerstein
(MIT, Flirting with Disaster) and others have tirelessly shown in other
disasters is that the internal organizational system is almost always the
root cause source.
Our systems are only as resilient as the decision making processes involved
in the original design and (in the case of the US shuttle incidents) the
organizational continuity and maintenance of relevant internal knowledge.
When the post-mortems are complete for the Fukushima plant incidents, there
will very likely be a "story" about organizational decisions made based on
efficiency principles where the engineering trade-offs were seemingly
acceptable. In a culture of rationalization, it is almost impossible to be
an effective whistleblower during these decision processes. There are often
extremely rigid lines of communicative power that screen out minority
reports, particularly in cultures where authority is followed and respected.
Peter Jones
Peter H. Jones, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Strategic Innovation Lab
Faculty, Strategic Foresight and Innovation
OCAD University
The information about tsunamis is extensive and detailed, and readily
available to local designers and contractors. It is embedded in their
practise of civil engineering.
But there are many, many other factors that influence the process. To say
that using this single data point, of the bronze Buddha that survived, would
have prevented anything, is too simplistic. To really understand what
happened that led to this disaster would require understanding at least the
last 50 years of history of the place in very significant detail, as well as
understanding the impact of many external influences. The system that led
Japan to this point is wildly non-linear and complex; without a proper
model, there's no way we can make any meaningful statements about it.
Cheers.
Fil
On 18 March 2011 03:05, Kari Kuutti <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Engineering calculations are fine, but they are just as good as the
> starting data and assumptions, and here one thing has struck me as odd.
>
> On the same pacific shore just couple of hundred kilometers south of
> Fukushima (50 km south of Tokyo) is Kamakura Daibutsu, the second
> largest bronze statue of Buddha in Japan, about 13 meters high. It was
> casted around 1300, and initially housed in a temple. Buddhist temples
> are massively built, and they are rather immune to earthquakes.
> However, in 1495 a tsunami wave wiped the temple off, and the Daibutsu
> has been standing in open air since then.
>
> The site of the Daibutsu is about one kilometer from the shoreline,
> slightly uphill. It is in a valley like buddhist temples often are,
> but the valley is not a very narrow one. A wave capable of destroying
> the twentysomething meter high temple around the statue must have been
> mighty indeed, at least similar than the one that hit Fukushima, if
> not even larger.
>
> Apparently this experience has not been taken as the starting point in
> the calculations.
>
> I really hope the "the 50" can finally get their beasts tamed; the
> catastrophe is already bad enough as such without a nuclear accident
> getting totally out of hands.
>
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