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The special issue of Interfaces journal from 2006 was entitled: Homeland Security: Operations Research Initiatives and Applications. You might find some of the papers interesting, since they touch on broad range of topics discussed on this blog. Some of the topics are bio-security/terrorism, emergency response and critical infrastructures. The article number 6 is especially interesting, since the author starts by drawing a direct link between homeland security and the genealogy of operations research expertise that we have been tracing in OEP research.

Trust for America's Health has released its 2007 edition of "Ready Or Not?", a yearly treasure trove of information on the state of public health preparedness in the US. The report provides a thorough assessment of the wide array of activities, issues and trends that intersect to help form this constantly changing field. It is a gem and should be required reading for anyone with a professional interest in the field. TFAH's modus operandi for assessing preparedness has remained largely the same for the last several years: In light of its related observations that (a) the government does not provide routine assessments of preparedness to the public, and (b) the extent of objective, universally agreed upon measures of public health preparedness is questionable, the study authors present 10 indicators which are proposed as proxies for what they consider to be its most salient (and valid) dimensions. Although the authors concede that the measures are not always ideal, I believe that in at least one instance the selected indicator is positively puzzling. The dimension is community resilience; the indicator is whether a state has 14 or more Medical Reserve Corps volunteers per 100,000 population. If you are asking: "What does the MRC have to do with community resilience?" - then you are asking a valid question... and that presupposes that you know the answer to the valid prior question "What actually is the MRC?" The quick and dirty answer to the latter question, found here, is that the MRC is a service organization sponsored by the federal government (specifically, the Office of the Surgeon General) to bring together community volunteers who can provide organized medical and health-related services and expertise routinely and in times of crisis to meet local community needs. The MRC fits within the rubric of the Citizen Corps and other national volunteer/service institutions. The answer to the former is a bit trickier. As a service organization recruiting local practitioners and experts, the MRC arguably reflects local communities' abilities to harness latent, residual, or reserve "talent" which can be mobilized to deploy as and where needed within that community, say during a sudden crisis. Yet to my mind a tenuous inference exists in equating the existence of a certain number of practitioners who have registered or volunteered to be available in a disaster with a community's resilience. There are, for example, numerous methodological pitfalls, which likely outweigh the benefit of this measure. I will highlight three of them. First, there is the issue of selection bias - that is, the notion that certain states, and indeed certain communities within those states, are more (or less) likely to have medical practitioners and other experts volunteer for the MRC owing to a number of factors, ranging from community civic/civil orientations or involvement to economic opportunities and allowances, and more. In other words, some states have populations that are more likely to know about and volunteer with the MRC than others. Second and third, I am unaware of any literature vetting or in fact proposing that one measure of a community's resilience should revolve around some proportion of its formally organized medical volunteers, not to mention the fact that the population from which to construct this rate is to be found in a relatively obscure federally-sponsored program. Related to all this is the threshold number itself: 14. By TFAH's own indication, the number reflects the 25th percentile of states' proportion of MRC volunteers per 100,000. This means, in essence, that what constitutes acceptable community resilience is itself unhinged from any normative metric; there is no prescriptive claim as to what an acceptable number should be (based in science or philosophy or religion or palm-reading, etc.) other than the descriptive claim that what is acceptable hinges on what is currently in evidence. So where does that leave us? Maybe a clue to this can be found in the concept of resilience, which in recent years has come to be described, give or take, as a community's (or some other unit's) ability to absorb loss, maintain its "structural" or social organizational integrity, and continue to function. It is particularly salient as a concept for VSS insofar as an emphasis has been placed in relatively recent years on critical infrastructures as key nodes which can facilitate resilience. For example, as things like redundancy and durability and sustainability are built into critical systems, the argument goes, they will be able to absorb the shock of an extreme or otherwise overwhelming event (of whatever duration) and permit effective response and recovery, if not in a seemless manner then at least with nominal acceptable effectiveness. So, with all this said, the question arises yet again. What does the MRC have to do with community resilience? Until I see some stronger proofs, my sense is: not much.

Despite recent spikes in H5N1 avian influenza activity in humans and birds, there have been fewer bird outbreaks in fewer countries this year [2007] than in 2006, according to a preliminary report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). CIDRAP News [edited]

<http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/avianflu/news/dec1907fao.html>

 

 

Despite recent spikes in H5N1 avian influenza activity in humans and birds, there have been fewer bird outbreaks in fewer countries this

year [2007] than in 2006, according to a preliminary report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

 

As of 10 Dec 2007, 30 countries had reported H5N1 cases in birds this year [2007], compared with 54 in 2006, the FAO reported. This year, 5

countries have reported their 1st outbreaks: Bangladesh, Benin, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, and Togo. Except for sporadic outbreaks in wild

birds, most of the H5N1 cases this year occurred in domestic poultry, such as chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, and quail.

 

The H5N1 outbreaks seemed to follow a seasonal pattern, in line with

evidence that cooler temperatures are more favorable to influenza

viruses. The FAO said outbreak numbers in 2007 were high between

January and April, declined until September, and then started rising

again in November and December.

 

Increased awareness and improved disease surveillance have enabled

countries such as India, Romania, Malaysia, and Turkey to detect and

control the spread of the H5N1 virus, the FAO reported. However, the

disease persists in Asia, Africa, and Europe and poses a risk for

countries that have controlled outbreaks in the past and those that

have not experienced infections yet, the organization stated.

 

The FAO said Indonesia is still having a large number of H5N1

outbreaks in poultry, which largely reflects a new "participatory

disease search" program designed to detect infections in backyard

poultry. The program, with support from the FAO, is operating in 162

districts and 9 provinces.

 

Among other Asian hot spots for the disease, Viet Nam reported H5N1

outbreaks in 22 provinces in May 2007, the FAO reported. It said the

disease appears to be endemic in Bangladesh.

 

China had H5N1 outbreaks in Tibet in March 2007, Hunan province in

May 2007, and Guangdong province in September 2007, the agency said.

In addition, routine surveillance detected the virus in March and

April 2007 in the southern Chinese provinces of Fujian, Guangdong,

Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, and Chongqing, the FAO reported. Also, wild

bird deaths were reported in Hong Kong but not in mainland China.

 

The only Middle Eastern country reporting an H5N1 outbreak so far

this year [2007] has been Saudi Arabia, which had its 1st cases in

March 2007, followed by several outbreaks near Riyadh in November

2007 [Seven outbreaks officially reported to the OIE, but unofficial

data mention 38 outbreaks since November 2007; see 20071224.4131. - Mod.AS].

 

In Africa, 4 countries have reported H5N1 outbreaks in 2007, and the

FAO said the virus is considered endemic in Egypt and possibly in

Nigeria. "Several countries in West, Central, South, and North Africa

are at risk of becoming infected, and early warning, surveillance,

and preventive measures should urgently be taken," the organization reported.

I shouldn't be so snarky because the story is actually really interesting. Check out this link from yesterday's LA Times, which details the behind-the-scenes politicking which proved the coup de grace for one of the nation's first next-generation vaccines against a category A agent: VaxGen's rPA102 anthrax vaccine. Deft lobbying and savvy rhetoric by Emergent BioSolutions, Inc., proved insurmountable for the South San Francisco company, which not only failed to produce the nation's first BioShield-related vaccine, but was kicked in the teeth for trying. Amongst all the great reasons for not wanting to see anthrax ever appear amongst human populations in epidemic proportions is the discomfiting imagery of the six shot series of vaccinations that will still be needed in the event of such a threat. Emergent BioSolutions, manufacturer of said scary but mostly-kind-of effective vaccine, effectively argued that VaxGen's (substantially less onerous) product was of questionable worth, developed by novices. Ouch. I thought BioShield's point was to get novices in the game, because BigPharma was avoiding orphan vaccines like the plague. Ha! The plague! Oh yeah, and look at this cool picture.

I am happy to introduce Amelia Moore to this blog. Amelia is a doctoral student at UC Berkeley. Currently, she is conducting fieldwork in the Bahamas (and the U.S.). Her terrific research project focuses on biocomplexity and resonates with many other projects conducted by our little group over here at the vss blog. Amelia recently sent me a short description of her research project. To learn more, read on! Investigating Biocomplexity: Forms of Contemporary Environmental Research in the BahamasI am currently conducting my dissertation fieldwork in several locations in The Bahamas. As an archipelago of over 700 low lying islands protected by the world’s third largest reef system, The Bahamas is perceived by reef biologists and conservationists as a uniquely situated site for contemporary environmental research projects concerning marine reserve design and human/environment interaction. Regional fears about climate change, fisheries stability, and ecological and social vulnerability lend a necessary urgency to this research, creating a space, like many in the world, where potential crisis is simultaneously an opportunity to devise emergent scientific forms. My own work focuses on the experts and technicians, Bahamian and foreign, involved in environmental research and management in The Bahamas, and on the ways in which they create and utilize practical forms of knowledge and reinvent, or remediate, general ideas.The general questions guiding my study are the same questions which currently structure the expanding domain of contemporary environmental research as an increasingly globally oriented phenomenon. They are, what is the human relation to the environment, what are the changes occurring within that relation, what is the best way to go about intervening in that relation in order to prevent catastrophe, and how do we come to know what is best? The questions might also be rephrased as, what is life today, how is life changing today, what is at stake for life today, and how do we secure life today? These questions delineate a growing problem space around the notion of life today. My own work takes this up as an anthropological problem concerning the way in which life today, in a certain domain of action, has become simultaneously an object and a question in a milieu of perceived difficulties and crisis.Investigating the ways in which life has become a question today, how it has become problematized in the realm of environmental research, also entails investigating how problems travel across the globe, how specific projects are designed to address them, and how specific research sites are selected as the location of possible answers. This leads me from research centers of the US- the NSF headquarters and the Center for Biodiversity Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History- to my primary field site. My own research in The Bahamas will be an investigation of the milieu of international research projects- the current and historical concerns and proposed interventions surrounding coral reef conservation and fisheries sustainability that situate the projects within that archipelagic nation. I want to consider the ways in which the Bahamas, through its marine ecology and specific social, political, and economic situating, became a site for the investigation of such “global” problems; I want to consider the various ways in which data is produced from this site; and I also want to consider how particular projects come to appeal to certain Bahamian governmental and non-governmental institutions and actors as an appropriate means through which to generate knowledge about conditions in the Bahamas.One aspect of my research concerns the notion of biocomplexity as one new formulation of life within this problem space which enables the objectification and investigation of life in novel ways. It is also a scientific assemblage which has formed as one attempt to begin to answer these questions about life today. In an article in Bioscience derived from a panel discussion at the 2001 annual meeting for the American Institute for Biological Sciences, "Defining and Unraveling Biocomplexity," biocomplexity is referred to as a concept intuitively grasped by scientists and engineers. The panelists proposed a tentative definition for the term, with the presumption that this definition would be modified in the future: Biocomplexity is "properties emerging from the interplay of behavioral, biological, chemical, physical, and social interactions that affect, sustain, or are modified by living organisms, including humans." I propose to examine a particular moment in environmental research, a moment comprising the recent past, present, and near future, that is the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Biocomplexity in the Environment Investment Program. I will approach this program, and the notion of biocomplexity in an imperiled global ecosystem that it promoted, through a specific project funded by the NSF from 2000 to 2006, the Bahamas Biocomplexity Project (BBP) and its current permutations.The role of the social scientist within the emergent biocomplexity assemblage is also a primary concern of mine precisely because their involvement is an explicit aspect of the problematization of contemporary environmental research. As notions of life become increasingly construed as complex, the distinctions between what is considered human and what is considered nature become increasingly blurred and rearticulated in new ways. Social scientists, as researchers authorized to produce knowledge about human organization and behavior, are now implicated in the production of knowledge about nature because nature itself, understood as the dynamic and complex processes of life (understood as biocomplexity) now has an integral (or internal) human component. Interdisciplinarity has become the mode through which research is conducted in the biocomplexity assemblage, and social scientists participate with natural scientists and life scientists on the common project of elucidating the complex systems of planetary life. In other words, the problematization of life within the biocomplexity assemblage requires an attention to holism in research design which necessitates the inclusion of social scientists in some projects as representatives of the social component of life. Contemporary environmental research may be instantiating a return to cosmological thinking, though this new sort of cosmology as biocomplexity is less concerned with proving the existence of God than it is with securing or saving vital living systems from collapse and catastrophe. I am concerned with the potential implications of such an internalization of social science within this assemblage.Finally, my research pays attention to the history of social scientific research in The Bahamas and the Caribbean, and the particular problematizations therein which resonate in interesting ways with the emergent problematization of life. Since the anthropological and sociological “discovery” of the Caribbean as a socially distinct geographic region, the area has long been construed as the site which either embodied or prefigured the worldwide complexification and globalization of human social, political, and economic processes. The region became a conceptual testing ground which broke conventional social theory, forcing an attention to contact, complexity, dynamism, scale, change, and the development of new concepts and research designs. The contemporary Caribbean, conceived of as the site of dynamic human and natural marine systems, is again figured as an embodiment of complexity within the frame of biocomplexity research, and I hope to remain attentive to the ways in which these two problems, the problem of life and the problem of the Caribbean, may potentially parallel, intersect, or reinforce each other in the Bahamian milieu, and to the way in which these problems are articulated and internalized by BBP scientists, Bahamian conservationists, teachers and lecturers, governmental and NGO officials, and Bahamian fishers.

The engineering society IEEE's general magazine Spectrum has a featurette on "Open Source Warfare" in the November online version. It's written by Robert Charette, who normally tracks software failures at his blog Risk Factor. The article is a good one, as these things go, spurred on by John Robb's recent book Brave New War. Robb is a RAND researcher who has been writing about so-called open source warfare for a few years now. I thought I'd post this here because it's obviously of concern to me that the term open source is being applied in this way. What it means to the RAND researchers and people who think the concept makes sense, is captured by my title here though: jihadists and insurgents are said to be more efficient at innovating their techniques because they are "free from the administrative burdens of maintaining their own infrastructure..." and can rely on Wal Mart and Fedex to supply and ship the things they need to make household bombs. So, my analysis of open source is useful here, in that I think they are absolutely right about this, but that it is only one piece of what makes open source distinctive... but lacks many others. There is no mention of the intellectual property related aspects, or the specific mode of openness that characterizes software projects, much less the specifc IT tools people use. But it is correct about one thing, which is the reliance on existing standardized infrastructures and hardware, such as the widely shared PC architecture, file formats (for insurgents' videos), the Internet, secure international credit transactions for online purchasing and so on. The phrase "administrative burdens" is a peculiar one though. Much or the article focuses on the weapons acquisition process of the US Military, arguing that the process simply takes a long time. The implicit argument seems to be that this process and the time it takes to acquire weapons should be changed and shortened. I wonder though, whether this is just another way of arguing that the military should have less oversight, more secrecy, and less accountability... which would be pretty much the opposite of what open source can and has achieved in other areas.