Scenarios and epidemics. Our last seminary

Yesterday we held the first July seminary, one of the latest seminaries of this course. In this time, we

analysed some scenarios gathered from the CDC & ECDC websites, the WHO webpage, and also from the media like The Daily Telegraph or BBC (you can see one of them below). 

Here some notes about this meeting:

-In scenarios, we found a kairos time, a single event.

-Video "life after Armageddon" is a structure in which we can see how "good people" are going to survive after a period of chaos, disorder ...

-Scenarios are stories where it is built and conveys a particular kind of narrative.

-Textual scenarios are outdated, they can not reach everyone. Video-scenarios can, and we could see how these are this scenarios-as-spectacles.

-The logic of the scenarios is a logic of exceptionality, creating zones of indistinction to answer questions about themselves.

-Can the scenario itself be an operator speed?

3 common elements to all scenarios: Picture, speed, future.

Photo Credit: David Dehetre

Some notes about Epidemics, Future and Time

How is the global time? does it exists? It would be defined in those papers.

The global time is not an ubiquitous, univerisal, or almighty time, but a time of greater scale than the individual level, beyond the scale of you and me. It is a terrestrial time, mediated and supported by technologies that "track" both epidemics and other factors like earthquakes, climate change, etc.

What relationship would have to aión time, kairos and chronos in the Deleuze theory??

Global Time is a time linked to action; it is a global time, which is intended to represent (provide maps and graphics). It is a time we try to capture with the eye, a time trapped because the space set its limits (in a display, the limit of what you can see).

It is a time turned image, that allows us to see all the same, it homogenizes. It is a translation ANT terms.

What interest does analyze / study scenarios in this kind of image-of-future-time?

Time and the future are elements that are always on scenarios. In the new scenarios based on epidemics, visuality is very important.

Dichotomy Strategy-tactic: we could ask to search within scenarios a third way between these two, or between planification and chaos ... it could be area of indistinction given by Agamben.

Scenarios are a spectacle. And the more spectacular, the better they are. And a very important element within this spectacle is the image. The image is equated with spectacle, not scenario. If you see a work where everything looks well-defined, you have a representation, a categorization. The fact that everything is mixed and is a mess, is what makes it a chaos.

We must not equip scenario to spectacle, but there are moments of indistinction where all scales merge and create time-spectacle moments mediated by images.

Photo Credit: Surian Soosay

Francisco Tirado's Seminary at CEHIC - UAB: POBICS, Pandemics, Scenarios, Early Warning-Systems and Images

As we were announcing this weekend, here is the recording about our seminary at the CEHIC, presenting our research group, our inquiries, and our research. There are two parts, and in the next post, we will publish the public questions made by the assistants:

(Note: video is in Spanish and probably you must turn up the volume).

Part I:

Part II:

 

Video Credit: POBICS Staff.

Biocapitalism, state of exception, and scenarios.

After several weeks shaping a new paper about biocapitalism (you can read about our first ideas here), we are finalizing it with new concepts and theories where our recent seminaries have had a clear influence (particularly, the Agamben's reading). 

Finally, the paper is about a brief review about the biopolitical proposal given by Agamben, and then we offer our particular vision. The key idea is the political axis is not longer the "leading actor" in our contemprary time about the law or govermentality, but it is the techno-scientific knowledge about the bios and life. Despite some theories like Rose for instance, we propose that this shift till the techno-scientific rule is fostered by the scenario concept.

What is then, a scenario?, it is the techno-scientifical injuction where the classical and positive conception about the Scientific Method is substituted by the creation of fictional futures within the preparedness logic of government. Our novelty results by placing the scenario-creation before the prearedness. Scenarios, then, are the new state of exception within this new key role of bioscience and biotechnology. This state of exception creates deterritorialized life flows without a main figure (unlike for Agamben, which talks about the Homo Sacer figure).

How we explain the performance of this new logic? Through the equipment concept given by Foucault. In the paper, we offer some examples about how it works, and you can read it when the paper is available. We want to offer a new conception about the role of bioscience in our contemporary life, and some points about a new state of exception articulated by the same kind of knowledge. 

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Wes Peck.

New theoretical answers about scenario-planning

Along the past week, I asked in diverses forums about the question of scenario (you can check out my past posts about it here and here) but now, with concrete questions and trying to link it with the citizenship's collaborative role (as part of early warning systems). Here is the answers:

"In our practice, these scenario-driven exercises are primarily focused on finding out the strengths and weaknesses of both your team (manpower levels, training updates, etc.) and your infrastructure, equipment and supply chain (is the inventory current?, is the equipment working?, are the facilities available in an emergency?, etc). From these initial questions you can draft a simple, yet relevant scenario to test both an unforeseen outbreak as well as your current surveillance capabilities. Then you can start adding challenges to this. Realistic scenarios will start with "a day in the life" of your particular team in your facility, then something 'goes wrong' or "someone notices something out of the ordinary in his/her routine, but didn't make much of it..." that's how situations evolve from bad to worse to crises. Hope this helps."

 

Another and full answer; very insteresing and gathered in ResearchGate, say:

"I will address your questions one after the other in a new order.

Is it true that scenarios are based in imagination?

Scenario planning also implies scenario thinking or scenario analysis - so it can be implied that this is based on deep and critical thinking and imagination.

How does it work?

Well, this is how it works:

It begins with defining the objectives and scope of the pandemic

This is closely followed by defining the key drivers of the pandemic

This will be followed by the collation and analysis of relevant data. Such data include quantitative, qualitative and expert opinion, access the predictability and the impact of the key drivers and defining appropriate measures associated with the key drivers

Another stage involves developing scenario

Applying scenario

and finally refining scenario through updates

How is scenarios defined  by bio-experts?

Well, scenarios are defined by bio-experts by carefully analysing the different biological parameters and key drivers  that will be associated in predicting a pandemic.

What are the root of this concept in biosecurity and biosurveillance projects?

The significance of this concept(scenario analysis) in biosecurity and biosurveillance related project cannot be underestimated. It provides a predictive platform for scientists to know and understand ahead the major and minor impact a pandemic will have on a community or a society. 

It also helps scientists to incorporate essential bio-security measures to curb the negative impact of such pandemic.

I hope I have provided some answers to your questions."

A third expert tell us, in this sense:

"Scenarios are meant to project potential impacts (primary, secondary...) of potential threats/hazards at macro and micro (local) levels- e.g. impacts to families/communities/vulnerable people. To which practical response measures are formulated and serve as the basis for preparedness efforts (things that we have to organize today during normal times so that we can indeed effectively respond if called for). Thus, scenario-based planning can be used to test existing set of plans or to inform first stage planning. In this regard, while fiction and imagination will be applied, it must be out of experiences and good educated foresight and appreciating possibilities."

 Finally, an answer quite close to our goals:

"Scenario planning as a part of pandemic preparedness can be quite diverse, and much dependent upon who is involved, whether the scenario involves national or international cooperation, and what the ultimate goals are in terms of protecting national biosecurity, global spread, mitigation, etc.  Clearly scenario planning must involve some imagination since it is an event that has not yet happened; but it should be greatly informed by earlier situations that have occurred that may be similar.  A good example is that new pandemic influenza strategies incorporate lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, for which there is much recent data and analysis.  One thing that is rapidly changing the social aspects of potential pandemic emergence is the widespread use of social media, electronic communication, etc.  These things have changed radically even in the last 5 years since the H1N1 pandemic.  Social media can be very useful if properly used to communicate information and prevention and/or mitigation measures.  However, the ability of the public to discriminate between good information and erroneous information is very limited, and thus social media's widespread indiscriminate use can pose great threats to getting accurate information out and coordinating responses. For these reasons, social media must be a major part of today's scenario planning, and should be coordinated with adequate filters at all levels, from international partnerships to local community-based strategies."

To sum up all these proposals, we can say, about scenario-planning:

• The imaginational factor exists in scenario-planning, but also it's used information about past events (and this include traditional risk-management and statistics).
• Scenario-plannning is not used only in order to prepare against a threat, but also to know how is workin at present actions that are carrying out.
• The exchange in scales exists, that is to say, scenario-planning not only seeks to prepare or isolate a concrete or local outbreak, but also encompasses large-scale and total scales.
• The role of citizenship/population is important in order to manage affects, behaviors and (I guess) to enrole the as an active early warning system by including some equipment (in the Foucault sense). In few weeks, I will write a post about it because is the goal of a next paper.
• Scenario-planning is a source of information about a cocnrete situation. We need to "experience" the terror and the emergencie, not only imagine it or calculate it.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Angus Mcdiarmid

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

Upcoming paper: subjectivity and subjectifiers in European Union technologies of biosecurity

We have been reported that in the coming days, two of our new papers will be published in both Brazilian and Chilean journals of Social Sciences. The first of them is titled Subjectivity and Subjetifiers in European Union Technologies of Bioecurity, and here I am go to make and advance for all of you.

To this paper, we worked with some Spanish online-press news that pointing forward virus, bacteria, outbreaks or pandemics. Our aim was to describe some ideas in an Actor-Network Theory sense, where we can understand this news as a mediator-technology in the Latour theory. Hence, using some extracts of this news, we can illustrate the idea of subjectifier and scenario.

We understand subjectifiers as an element that offers to subject the possibility of a connexion with a reflective effect. A subjectifier is a portion of knowledge, ideas, images; that allow the person define itself. For the idea of scenario, we defined it as an element defined by having an affect attached to it. In this sense, throughout the paper we expose some illustrative examples about these concepts with the press-news, following the case of study methodology’ tradition. A scenario is the outcome of the connection of several subjectifiers, offering an affection with which to assess and complete the reflective exercise offered by subjectifiers.

As conclusion, we point out that biosecurity is not only to protect the population against some diverse biohazards, but referring to discourses, practices, images, laws, protocols, etc.

Finally, in order to understand the relation between biosecurity and subjectivity is necessary to use the technology-as-mediator concept. This deal is not about a narrative creation and an internalization of it later; but a connections issue, linked to mobile elements.

References:

Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s Hope, London: Harvard University Press.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social, New York: Oxford University Press.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Procsilas Moscas (http://bit.ly/1uq4ICV)