Archives: February 2006
Tue Feb 28, 2006
Was there an emergency response simulation before Buncefield?
Having raised this question earlier, I found a short piece on the web by Disaster Advice Limited. This makes two statements about the degree of exercising before Buncefield oil terminal fire. More...
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Mon Feb 27, 2006
Doing something else
I could not resist a paper with a title like Heuristics in dynamic decision making: Coping with the time constants of a dynamic task by doing something else, from the 23rd International Conference of the System Dynamics Society held July 17-21, 2005 in Boston. More...
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Sat Feb 25, 2006
Bird Flu Drills - how not to do them.
According to ABC news, the French authorities held a bird flu exercise in Lyons yesterday. An interesting example of a 'political' simulation, proving nothing except that politicans think people are more gullible than we actually are. More...
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Fri Feb 24, 2006
Does modelling fail fund managers (and others)?
Just seen an article on the Ludwig van Mises website, about Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. This is the classic contrarian 'anti-statistics' argument, this time made by a financial trader. More...
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Sound maps
Classiloghas a posting about disappearing sounds, and the idea of a 'sound map' Here is a perfect project for internet 'mashups' - Google maps linked to sound maps, etc. To judge from Mark's hyperlinks, this is largely unexplored territory. More...
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3D tools
CSVen has a blog entry about a Second Life conference on 3D extraction. This refers to technology for capturing 3D images and creating artefacts. More...
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Thu Feb 23, 2006
How to deal with bloggers
According to the Christian Science Monitor, the US and its allies held "Exercise Cyberstorm" in early February to test the response to a cyber-attack on the US. Parts of it "challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.". More...
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MNE4 - the sales pitch, some documents, and the complexity.
There's a presentation available by CDR Ed Whalen, NATO MNE 4 Experiment Director, explaining who should attend ("Anyone interested in Transformation"). I've also found more on the preparations. More...
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Tue Feb 21, 2006
Buncefield: were the emergency services prepared?
The initial report on the Buncefield explosion is now available. Alas, nothing is said about preparation, and whether any simulation exercises have been held at Buncefield recently. If thre were, it would be a good opportunity to compare an exercise with reality. More...
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More on MNE4.
The Post Chronicle has a UPI story about MNE4. (The Pentagon appear to have given a press briefing about it on 13 February). More...
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Mon Feb 20, 2006
-oramas
The 'Tinselman' blog has a piece about -oramas, those Victorian simulations of panoramas etc, and links to Adventures in Cybersound, a fascinating site describing other such magic machines. More...
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Sat Feb 18, 2006
More on MNE 4
Xinhua is carrying the story now - the only international news agency to do so, according to Google News. More...
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Fri Feb 17, 2006
Hurricane Pam: the US House of Reps Committee report
The Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina is now available. The exercise held in 2004, Hurricane Pam, comes out of it quite well: "Finding: Implementation of lessons learned from Hurricane Pam was incomplete" - ie good exercise, but no-one took it seriously. More...
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Game revenues falling - why?
Looks as though the growth of games companies is slowing down, according to Greg Costikyans' weblog.
According to his figures, most traditional video game companies are suffering a loss in revenue. (eg "EA, historically the strongest company in the industry and generally regarded as its best managed, saw a 31% drop in net revenues in 2005 and is laying off 5% of its workforce."). EA claims that it holds a 22 per cent revenue share in North America and 23 per cent revenue share in Europe, in addition to publishing four of the top 10 titles in North America and six of the top 10 in Europe during 2005.
More...
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Multinational Experiment 4 (MNE 4)
What might be the most ambitious simulation ever (except possibly Buckminster Fuller's 'World Game') is being quietly conducted in the next three weeks by the US and several allies. Set in (virtual) Afghanistan, the simulation "will explore the uses of international power (diplomatic, economic, military and information) to influence the behavior of adversaries." More...
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Linking simulations together
The Australian government has published its Acceptance Testing procedure for networked simulators. More...
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Thu Feb 09, 2006
Stamp out simulation!
According to a Times Online headline, "Managers and PFA join forces to stamp out simulation" . More...
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Sun Feb 05, 2006
The simulation of Identity
Financial Cryptography has a piece on the costs of forging identity documents. Here in the UK, a passport apparently costs £350 - £1000, and the better ones are completely capable of fooling immigration officials, allowing you to open bank accounts, etc. More...
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