Scenario planning in biosurveillance projects

For the current post, I want to talk about one issue we have been discussing today in our research meeting. And this is about one element of the preparedness logic of government: the scenario planning.

The source of this topic is one document we have found in the CDC website where it is exposed a scenario about an hypothetical tuberculosis contagion inside the United States. Scenario-based exercise, in words of Lakoff (2007) is a technical operation inside prepardness logic of government, and consists:

In the quest to be prepared for the eventuality of thermonuclear war, Kahn

counseled, every possibility should be pursued. “With sufficient preparation,” he wrote,

“we actually will be able to survive and recuperate if deterrence fails.”23 Kahn invented a

method for “thinking about the unthinkable” that would make such planning possible:

scenario development. Scenarios served two purposes. One was to assist in designing

role-playing games in which decision-makers would enact the lead-up to war with the

Soviet Union. In the absence of the actual experience of a nuclear standoff, these

exercises provided officials and military planners with something close to the sense of

urgency such a crisis would bring. The second use of scenarios was to force both planners

and the public to seriously face the prospect of nuclear catastrophe as something that

must be planned for in detail.

Thus, we can see scenarios as the solution for one event that we cannot know neither when nor where will emerge, as a potential pandemics. For this, traditional risk-asessment is not useful because it cannot be controlled or foreseen at the basis of past events because its configuration is not ever seen before. What we need, then, for it managing? a pre-event preparation, based in imagination:

The general problem scenario planning addressed was how to approach an

unprecedented event. Scenarios were not predictions or forecasts, but opportunities for

exercising an agile response capability. They trained leaders to deal with the

unanticipated. “Imagination,”

Our reflection is about one previous step: how is defined scenarios by bio-experts? what are the root of this concept in biosecurity and biosurveillance projects? how does it works? it is true that scenarios are based in imagination?

References:

Lakoff, Andrew. (2007). Preparing for the Next Emergency. Public Culture 19(2)247–271.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Manuel M. Almeida

What is preparedness?

In my last post I was talking about some references (Collier, 2008; Lakoff, 2009. Samimian-Darash, 2009. Anderson, 2010) pointing out if regardless of whether the next step was a new Cold War or a biological strategy, the most interesting issue (for me) was the consequences of it in terms of preparedness. Nevertheless, what exactly preparedness means when we talk about the biotic plan or otherwise, a new Cold War?

In fact, preparedness is a new logic of preparation or readiness in order to manage a new kind of risk with which states have to struggle since new technologies, bio-terrorism or big catastrophes as Katrina appeared.

Before the appearance of preparedness, risk assessment was made based on mathematical calculation and statistics, using a decision-making plan (see Fischhoff & Kadvany, 2013). This way of understanding risk was sufficient until Cold War (this period is matched with the computer and technological boom) but at this time, the chances of risk appears exponentially grow: states begin to understand that it can be anywhere, caused by anyone, in a global scale (and no longer between states or well-defined territories, blurring boundaries).

Thus, states moved from a precaution logic to a preparedness logic, in which the most important is to be ready in order to cope with this next emergency, whatever their nature may be and whenever it can occur. Three are the main shifts:

a)      As I already said, boundaries between states or territories are erased or blurred. If the risk can arrive by any way and at any time, is necessary to adopt a global-scale in order to be prepared. Here are a key role of WHO, WTO, FAO, CDC, ECDC… institutions that are linked with states, other local establishments, hospitals, laboratories, universities...

b)      This initial global-scale, needs to be assembled with local associations in different scales until enrol lay people in their daily lives.

c)      Finally, with preparedness states are struggling with the future directly, from present, so, in some way, the virtual-future are becoming (in the Deleleuzian sense) present. We can even say that the present are being wrote from the future, and not the opposite.

References:

Anderson, B. (2010). Preemption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6), 777-798

Collier, S.J. (2008). Enacting Catastrophe: preparedness, insurance, budgetary rationalization. Economy and society, 37(2), 225-250.

Fischhoff, B. Kadvany, J. (2011). Risk: a very short introduction. New York: Oxford.

Lakoff, A. (2009). Swine Flu and the Preparedness Apparatus. Keele University. Newcastle.

Samimian-Darash, L. (2009). A pre-event configuration for biological threats: preparedness and the constitution of biosecurity events.American Ethnologist, 36(3), 478-491.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user: Nuclear Regulatoy Comission (http://bit.ly/1xVNyTz)

Is it approaching a new nuclear race?

After few months, I want to relaunch my blog and I though the best way was writing about the best thing I know, and although I don't know so much about it, this issue is biosecurity, biosurveillance, pandemics and society.

Thus, I've just write in a LinkedIn group answering the post Mr. Koblentz post, The United States Should Shape the Second Nuclear Age Before It’s Too Late:

"In a new report released by the Council on Foreign Relations, "Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age," I describe how changes in geopolitics and technology have led to the rise of a new nuclear order. This second nuclear age is characterized by new nuclear states, new sources of uncertainty, and a new geometry of deterrence.

During the Cold War, the potential for nuclear weapons to be used was determined largely by the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, with 16,300 weapons possessed by the seven established nuclear-armed states—China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—deterrence is increasingly complex. Since most of these countries face threats from a number of potential adversaries and their deterrence relationships are increasingly interconnected, changes in one state’s nuclear policy can have a cascading effect on the other states.

Though many states are downsizing their stockpiles, Asia is witnessing a nulcear buildup; Pakistan has the fastest-growing nuclear program in the world. By 2020, it could have a stockpile of fissile material that, if weaponized, could produce as many as two hundred nuclear devices. South Asia is the region “most at risk of a breakdown in strategic stability due to an explosive mixture of unresolved territorial disputes, cross-border terrorism, and growing nuclear arsenals.”

Emerging technologies such as missile defenses, cyber and antisatellite weapons, and conventional precision strike weapons pose additional risks and could potentially spur arms races and trigger crises.

The United States should work with other nuclear states to address sources of instability in the near term and establish processes for multilateral arms control efforts over the longer term. "

And this is my answer:

"It's so interesting what you say, Mr. Koblentz. But, for my point of view, the most important and the most interesting is the impplications of this likely second "Cold War" in terms of logic of war and widely, logic of society. I have read quite a lot about the change in the logic of prevention, from precaution to preparedness in USA and then in the whole West, and it would be nice to know what is the "next step" or the next shift. 

On the other hand, due to my studies, I think this next step it's not about nuclear realm, but biosecurity and biosurveillance issues, deploying this logic of preparedness by protecting the biotic."

So, what is more important, a new nuclear-scale or the recent bio-preparedness strategy? you can check what is talking about the second one in some bibliography like this:

1. Anderson, B. (2010). Preemption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6), 777-798
2. Collier, S.J. (2008). Enacting Catastrophe: preparedness, insurance, budgetary rationalization. Economy and society, 37(2), 225-250.
3. Lakoff, A. (2009). Swine Flu and the Preparedness Apparatus. Keele University. Newcastle.
4. Samimian-Darash, L. (2009). A pre-event configuration for biological threats: preparedness and the constitution of biosecurity events. American Ethnologist, 36(3), 478-491.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user NIAID (http://bit.ly/1qZxBeg)