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Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Catastrophes & Hubris and Greed

Robert Bea, catastrophic risk management expert, indicates that 90% of engineering problems that lead to catastrophes are induced by humans and the hubris and greed of their organizations. He uses a variety of some well known catastrophes as examples:
Deepwater Horizon 2010,
Midwest Floods 2008,
Columbia Disaster 2003,
Exxon Valdez Crash 1989.

Add in the factor of extreme short sightedness and you’ve got examples such as the New Orleans - Katrina disaster, the North Sea Piper Alpha oil platform disaster, the Galveston-Hurricane Ike disaster, Superstorm Sandy and other disasters — 
all of which will be repeated with increasing severity as population densities and the natural conditions that contributed to them increase.

Perhaps my conclusion should be entitled “Human Induced Global Warming: Hubris, Greed and Short Sightedness”.

Read:
Robert Bea: Master of Disaster 
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/june/14-master-of-disaster