Our Accelerating World of DIsasters
PETE O'DELL
CEO/Founder, Swan Island Networks
I’m starting a new book about Shared Global Resilience, and would appreciate your views and opinions on this important topic. Our TX360 situational awareness platform helps organizations to understand the threat picture, but is only one of many tools needed to protect vulnerable populations. I will focus the book on the many things that will have a major impact over the coming years; drones, batteries, redundant internet, mutual assistance, and much more.
With the rapid shift toward urbanization, increasing populations, fragile infrastructures, climate change and increased reliance on electronics to communicate, a major disaster today is totally different than one from 20 years ago. Our accelerating technologies being mainstreamed are going to both help and hurt mitigation, response and recovery.
There are some fantastic efforts emerging to bring a unified set of methods to bear on the problems and my Silver Bullets book (2010, free digital copy for the asking) illustrates the role of interoperable data as a means of speeding communications.
I will be adding more posts around this topic as the book unfolds. I’d urge you to take a look at your personal survival and resilience plan, including things like a solar cell phone charger and detailed first aid/survival instructions stored on all your cell phones. A reunification plan for your family and pets is also key. The bad part about disasters is they can strike unexpectedly.