Author Archives: Jared Wade

About Jared Wade

Jared Wade is a freelance writer and former editor of the Risk Management Monitor and senior editor of Risk Management magazine. You can find more of his writing at JaredWade.com.
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Life Cube: Disaster Response Thinking Inside the Box

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A large structure stands out on the exhibition floor at the World Conference on Disaster Management, enticing virtually every attendee wandering around to poke his or her head inside. Directly next to it is the same structure in different form, this one a 5′ x 5′ x 5′ Lego-looking cube on wheels that draws people over to give it a roll.

Half-disaster shelter, half-Transformer, they call it the Life Cube.

And given its design it is one of the more innovative, comfortable and convenient temporary dwellings that anyone arriving on the scene of a disaster could hope to call home. It’s waterproof, fire-resistant, able to stand up to 70 mph winds and comes equipped with a hard plastic floor (which is a true luxury), bedding, a portable toilet and a solar panel-powered master console/table that has a stove, AM/FM radio, CB and a phone charger. And it goes from its cube state (which can fit into the bed of a normal pickup or be stacked on a flatbed or carried by a forklift) to its fully inflated command center state in under five minutes.

Nice digs if you can get it.

This tricked-out model starts at around $14,000, I’m told, although a more basic version can be purchased for as low as $9,000 and custom orders with even more gadgets could get as expensive as your imagination allows.

Heck, throw in a flat screen and it might be nicer than my New York apartment.


Easy as one, two, three.

Richard Clarke: U.S. Under-Prepared for Cyberthreats

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Cybersecurity and cyberwarfare are major threats that neither companies nor the public sector are prepared for, said Richard A. Clarke in his morning keynote address to the World Conference on Disaster Management in Toronto. All too often, governmental IT officials have not properly discussed their systems with emergency managers and the fallout of any major shutdown could be catastrophic.

Clarke fears the results of any extended electrical or network outage. Many municipalities and organizations have generators that may provide a temporary solution, but what happens on day four? Day 7? Day 10? Operations may not return until the systems come back online and chaos could ensue.

Some have accused Clarke, and others who often express great concern over cyberwarface, of exaggerating the threat. Clarke acknowledged his critics, but believes he is by no means over-hyping the concerns that an unprepared nation should have.

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“I like being wrong when I predict disasters,” he said, “but I think I’m right on this one.”

He added that in addition to discussing the realities of cyberattacks and cyberwar the world must begin promoting “cyberpeace” by developing some international accords and norms to follow as this increasingly becomes a more critical issue to the world.

As we have seen during the Russia/Georgia conflict and the Stuxnet attack that someone (*cough* Israel and the United States *cough*) carried out on Iran’s nuclear industry, this is a reality that all nations and companies will have to contend with in the future. So it would seem that it is past time for international bodies to set some clearer standards.

For those who haven’t been following the news in recent years, Richard Clarke has become a polarizing figure in Washington due to his harsh criticism of the Bush administration’s stance on counter-terrorism and decision to go to war with Iraq. He spent 30 years working under both Republican and Democratic commander in chiefs, but his no-holds-barred words — and those he received from the Bush White House — forever altered the way he is seen by many outsiders no matter their political leanings.

Regardless there is no questioning the man’s expertise and credentials on both terrorism and cybersecurity. He is a foremost expert about both and has increasingly been focused on the latter of late. And he more than proved that today while talking to an audience that, even with its expertise in emergency management, remains novice in its understanding of security.

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Because he was so compelling — and some of the scenarios he described so frightening — I found myself listening more than taking notes and reporting. But below are some of the comments I posted to Twitter during the discussion, listed in reverse-chronological order.

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UPDATE: I just came across this excellent breakdown of Clarke’s speech by Ken Simpson. Here he succinctly encapsulates Clarke’s four areas of cybersecurity threats.

Clark described 4 general areas of Cyber attack, suggesting that we could visualise these in terms of overlapping circles;

  • Cyber Crime
    • Suggested that this was ignored, and perhaps encouraged by certain Eastern European states
      • I assume this is something they learned from the situation with the Mafia in Batista’s Cuba.
    • Apparently these organised cyber crime cartels are generating revenues similar to drug cartels
  • Cyber Espionage
    • This is undertaken for profit at times, cyber industrial espionage.
    • Also by sovereign states to steal national security secrets.
  • Hacktivists
    • In this case the hackers are aiming to prove that the target has weak security
    • Also to promote their own political cause
  • Cyber War
    • This is the new phenomenon, and seems to be proliferating – the equivalent of a cyber arms race.

Clark described the US Cyber Command, headed up by a 4-star General, and including the US Navy’s 10th Fleet. This fleet does not have any ships, just a flotilla of attack software.

The disturbing part is that the aim of this cyber warfare is not just to damage the other guys computers – but by doing that to cause significant impacts in the real world.

You can follow me @RiskMgmt for more live updates from the WCDM over the next two days.

What Is Resiliency?

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When it comes to disasters, prevention is of course better than recovery. But the real world is not paradise and catastrophes will occur. That inevitability means that how companies are able to respond and bounce back might be the most important aspect of disaster management.

Nobody’s perfect — but everyone can be resilient.

But what does that mean? What is resiliency?

Michael Collins of Argonne National Laboratory is helping define it for communities across the United States. And today at the World Conference on Disaster Management in Toronto, he discussed how, along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), his agency has been tasked with sending officials throughout the nation to assess how each area stacks up. Ultimately, the goal is to compile an objective, quantitative, comprehensive database so that the government — federal, state and local — has a baseline against which municipalities can be compered. It is an in-depth, long-term project that will greatly aid both DHS and FEMA in determining how communities can become more resistant to disasters.

So far, the “resiliency index” they are developing remains in its infancy. We will bring you more on it in the near future as I flesh out more of the details and get the opportunity to speak with Collins directly.

But as they continue to push things forward, let’s first look at a few of the definitions that Collins shared today in his presentation on what resiliency really means.

“Our goal is to ensure a more resilient nation. One in which individuals, communities and our economy can adapt to changing conditions as well as withstand and rapidly recover from disruption due to emergencies.” – Barak Obama

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“The capability to anticipate risk, limit impact and bounce back rapidly through survival, adaptability evolution and growth in the face of turbulent change” – Community & Regional Resilience Institute

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“The ability of individuals and communities to deal with a state of continuous, long term stress; the ability to find unknown inner strengths and resources in order to cope effectively; the measure of adaptation and flexibility” – Michael Ganor

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“The ability of community members to take meaningful deliberate collective action to remedy the impact of a problem.” – Building Resilience to Mass Trauma Events

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“A sustainable network of physical systems and human communities, capable of managing extreme events, during disasters, both must be able to function under extreme stress.” – David R. Godschalk

Lester Brown on How Climate Change Is Catastrophically Straining the Global Food Supply

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Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute

Throughout his distinguished career, Earth Policy Institute founder and president Lester Brown has sought to protect resources across the globe. This morning in his opening address at the World Conference on Disaster Management in Toronto, he stressed the importance of one that may now be as important as any ocean, rainforest or glacier. “Time is our scarcest resource,” said Brown on the urgency for the world to begin mitigating the effects of climate change. “How much do we have? No one knows for sure. When do we reach the point of no return. We don’t know.”

The theme of disaster prevention and catastrophe management will be at the forefront of all discussions that take place this week at the conference. But in Brown’s view, there is one disaster that supersedes all others: runaway climate change. To him, that’s “the Big D … the one that could end civilization.”

In addition to the ticking clock and the world’s inability to meaningfully cooperate on the issue, what makes the threat of climate change so catastrophic today is the volatility it places on the global food supply. More than ever, the world grain supply is being strained. And this comes at the same time that demand is increasing.

In the past, major grain surpluses for U.S. production could make up for unexpected droughts, floods or fires that wipe out crop yields in other areas of the globe. Today, however, those surpluses no longer exist. And this is likely the new normal.

To drive home his point, Brown highlighted the massive heat wave, drought and wildfires that wiped out 40% of the Russian grain harvest last summer. He said that if someone had told him before the disaster that the average temperature in Moscow in July would be 14 degrees Fahrenheit above average, he wouldn’t have believed it. “I’m not a climate denier, but that’s unreasonable,” is how he said he would have responded. “Well, that’s what happened.”

In and of itself, that supply shortage affected global prices and stressed the market. But if a similar event were to occur in Chicago? Grain prices would go through the roof.

Again, in the past, agriculture speculators could just chalk up such events as anomalies. Maybe a disaster wiped out some percentage of the global supply that year, but they could be confident that the next season would balance things out. Brown doesn’t seen that happening anymore, however. “There is no normal to go back to,” he said. “The climate is in a constant state of flux.”

And even without a single, identifiable disaster like the one in Russia, the future of the global food supply is troubling. Brown said that estimates project a 10% decrease in grain crop yields for every additional degree Celsius increase in global temperatures. “Each year, agriculture and the climate are more out of sync,” said Brown.

That’s not the only bad news on the supply side.

There is also an irrigation bubble that means today’s global output is artificially high. The United States, China and India are the three top grain-producing nations in the world. Only one-fifth of the U.S. grain yield comes from irrigated land. Even if the continually strained Colorado River basin or Mississippi River region were to dry up somewhat, the nation could still produce at nearly the same level it does today. It’s a different story in India and China, however, according to Brown.

World Bank data says that in India there are 175 million people being fed with grain produced by the over-pumping of local aquifers. The Earth Policy Institute estimates that number at 130 million in China.

It doesn’t take a scientist to see that this is unsustainable. Eventually, the aquifers that are being aggressively pumped will be depleted and, once they are, the rate of irrigation will only be able to match the natural aquifer’s rate of recovery, says Brown. So eventually the current levels will have to fall. The irrigation bubble will burst.

“That bubble has already burst in Saudi Arabia,” he said, adding that the nation will likely be out of the grain production business altogether in just a few years. Since Saudi Arabia only produces 0.5% of the world’s global grain supply, this won’t significantly hamper the global market. And if anyone can afford to import, it’s the Saudis. But this, in addition to depleting water tables throughout the the Middle East, and the bubbles in China and Israel, spells trouble.

“We are only one harvest away from chaos,” said Brown.

Additionally, demand is increasing. Throughout the developing world, particularly in India and China, there are hundreds of millions of people rising out of poverty who will greatly inflate the world’s middle class in the coming decades. Along with a larger middle class comes more people wanting to live a middle-class standard of life. Perhaps more than anything, this affluence will lead to greater food consumption. And since grain feeds both people and livestock, grain consumption per capita will only rise.

Then there are biofuels. In this sense, ethanol is a non-solution solution. It may cut down on carbon dioxide emissions. But crop yields are now being divided between the dinner plate and the gas tank.

The grim reality of all this is that, as the global food supply becomes more strained, so will nations. Food supply security is something that citizens demand from their government and if it disappears, so could the social order, leading to more failed states. “How many failing states before the whole system begins to unravel?” said Brown. “We don’t know this yet. We haven’t been there.”

And that’s the scariest part of all.

(In addition to listening to Lester Brown’s keynote address at the 2011 WCDM, I had the chance to interview him to get even more insight about climate change and the global food supply. Our Q&A will appear in the July/August issue of Risk Management magazine.)