View
224
Download
3
Category
Tags:
Preview:
Citation preview
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Black Swan or Red Herring?
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents:
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Instructor Introduction
Randy Templeton (MA, CEM, MCP, MEP, MFF)
Business Continuity and Emergency Management CoordinatorTexas Dept. of Family and Protective ServicesRandy.templeton@dfps.state.tx.us
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
What is My Purpose Today?
• To have a discussion of perspectives and viewpoints for considering preparation and planning for LF/HS incidents
• Not really here to teach you anything—I’d rather stimulate your thinking!
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Part 1: Defining the Problem
“The first responsibility for any leader is to define reality” –John Maxwell
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Risk Management Matrix: Q1 Incidents
Q1 (+,+)
Q4 (-,+)
Q2 (+,-)
Q3 (-,-)
SEVERITY
F R E Q U E N C YLow High
High+
+-
Q1 incidents, though severe, are also frequent. The implications of frequency are that organizations are likely to have devoted substantial resources to address the problem; and, by reason of practice, personnel are typically skilled in making corrections quickly to restore function.
Severit
y
Frequency
Q1Impa
ct
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Q2 IncidentsQ2 incidents are infrequent and severe--a dangerous combination. The lack of frequency often means that protocols, tools & equipment, procedures may not be in place, & personnel may not have developed KSAs. These reasons make Q2-type incidents the ideal models for training and exercise.
Q1 (+,+)
Q4 (-,+)
Q2 (+,-)
Q3 (-,-)
SEVERITY
F R E Q U E N C YLow High
High+
+-
Severit
y
Frequency
Q2
Impa
ct
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Q3 IncidentsQ3 incidents are neither severe nor frequent, and rise only to the level of "occasional nuisance." Few resources or attention should be devoted to Q3 problems.
Q1 (+,+)
Q4 (-,+)
Q2 (+,-)
Q3 (-,-)
SEVERITY
F R E Q U E N C YLow High
High+
+-
Severit
y
Frequency
Q3
Impa
ct
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Q4 IncidentsQ4 issues are not severe, though frequent. These often justify improvement/mitigation projects to decrease frequency of occurrence, thus converting them to Q3 occasional nuisances.
Q1 (+,+)
Q4 (-,+)
Q2 (+,-)
Q3 (-,-)
SEVERITY
F R E Q U E N C YLow High
High+
+-
Severit
y
Frequency
Q4
Impa
ct
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Q5 Incidents
These are “Wild Card” or “Black Swan” incidents. Whether local or global, these incidents are profoundly severe in some aspect of their nature that they change the society, the culture, or even the course of human life/history.
Severit
y
Frequency
Impa
ct
Q5
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Q6 Incidents
Impa
ct
Severit
y
Frequency
Q6
These incidents are not severe or frequent, but they are impactful—typically cultural or attitudinal. (Example: Kennedy assassination, Woodstock, moon landing, etc.)
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
What are “Black Swan” and “Wildcard” Incidents?
• “Low probability, high impact [incidents] that, were they to occur, would severely impact the human condition” (John Peterson, “Out of the Blue”);
• “…An [incident] that is believed to be of low probability of materializing but if it does…will produce a harm so great and sudden as to seem discontinuous with the flow of events that preceded it” (Richard A. Posner,
“Catastrophe”;
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
What are you saying?
• When we say “Low probability…” we typically add the qualifying elliptical clauses, “…in my lifetime” and/or “…in my experience;”
• Catastrophes on a global scale are an established part of earth’s history;
• “Low probability” is more appropriately “Unknown probability” in many cases.
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
LF/HS Incident Characteristics• (Usually) Sudden onset• May be foreseeable or not, warning or not• Solutions (if any) are often complex• Difficult to visualize; Hard to imagine response• Punctuations in the system• Can originate anywhere, but effect everywhere• Can be driven by perceptions• Can be either/both positive and negative• Difficult to convince others
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
LF/HS Incident Characteristics (Cont’d)• Can catalyze or have synergistic effects on
other wildcards• We are inventing the possibility of new
wildcards• Some wildcards are “too big to let happen”• Challenge conventional wisdom, the
“official future”• Are game-changers in the biggest sense
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Four Rules for W/BS:
• If you don’t think about wildcards before they happen, all of the value of thinking about them is lost!
• Understanding how to think about problems is as important (or more!) than solving all problems.
• Accessing and understanding information beforehand is key!
• Extraordinary events require extraordinary approaches.
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Part 2: Understanding the Obstacles
The Law of Apocalyptic Limitation: “No prediction of doomsday can be accurate except the last one.”
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Why Do We Fail to Prepare for Wildcard (Q2/Q5) Incidents?
1. The nature of human cognition– Shared mental models of how the world works– Difficulty of discounting the value of events that will
take place in the indeterminate future2. Poor or missing incentives to prepare– Hedging against the future is costly– Long-term payoff vs. immediate comfort
3. Institutional barriers– Solutions require collective action where there is no
basis for trust– No theory of sharing the load, pooling resources or
decision-making authority
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
17 Reasons…4. Imagination costs: mental exertion to think
about what we have not experienced5. Induction fallacy (“I’ve never seen a black swan,
therefore they do not exist”)6. Optimism bias/technological optimism7. Short-sighted world view (20thvs. 21st century)8. Short-term world view (“Not in my lifetime…”9. Confusing “frequency” and “probability”10. Chicken Little Syndrome (“doomsters”)
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
17 Reasons…(cont’d)11. Full plates: tyranny of the urgent12. Resource scarcity13. Cultural Conditioning (e.g., “science fiction,”
optimism backlash)14. “One Risk at a time” fallacy (Either/Or thinking)15. Dominant risk fallacy: “If risk A is > B, no
attention should be paid to B.”16. “Probability Neglect”—inability to respond
rationally to very-low-probability risks.17. Collective action difficulties
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
What do you think?
“A related distinction to bear in mind is between notional and motivational belief. It is possible to affirm a proposition on which one would never act, simply because the proposition was not felt deeply enough to impel action. Everyone knows that he or she will die someday, but a great many people do not act as if they know it.”
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
What Do You Think?
“Imaginative thinking must also be able to cope with issues that are possible but are also, by their nature, unthinkable. Perhaps their consequences would be horrible…[perhaps] not so bad anyway. Hope vacates judgment. The faster we get over denial, the sooner we can deal with the issue.”
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Part 3: Understanding Our Options
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” --Yogi Berra
Like Mt. Rushmore from the Canadian side:
You know, there are some things that you just never think of...
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
The Role of Agency Mission
• The more critical your organization’s mission to life, health and well-being, the more time, resources and variety of your Q2 planning.
• In a crisis, should your agency do more, or less, or the same?
• Is there ever a time when it is appropriate/ acceptable to turn out the lights and go home? (BOKYAG Principle)
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Response 1: Environmental Scanning
• Purposeful/Intentional monitoring of the internal and external environments.
• Reaching out to individuals and sources from multiple disciplines who think differently and use a variety of filters to make sense of information (open source fusion).
• Used for detecting early signs of both opportunities and threats.
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Environmental Scanning Frameworks
• Three Questions:– What are the three most important wildcards for me,
my family, community, society or organization?– Can they be anticipated?– Is there anything we can do to prepare?
• STEEP Model: social, technological, environmental, economic and political.
• “Scenario thinking”• “Choice Structuring”
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Response 2: Be Imaginative and Systematic
• Deal with the paradox.• EMs should routinely examine themselves:
“What am I not seeing?”• Practice changing before you have to.• Allot/Guard some wildcard reflection and
planning time.• Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety: “The
capacity to accommodate environmental change depends on the variety available inside the organization.”
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
• Wildcards are by their nature “unthinkable.”• EMs should guard against blinders that
affect others• EMs should develop strategies for making a
case for some form of wildcard planning• “Eyes wide open” because we do not know
from where the next threat will come.
Response 3: Be Open-Minded
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
• Ability to survive in the long-term; bending without breaking; “ evolvable.”
• Capability to turn threats into opportunities prior to their becoming either.
• Defining dimensions are resourcefulness, robustness, and adaptiveness– Resourcefulness: “Work-arounds” for technology– Robustness: Redundancy and diversification– Adaptiveness: “Big Chief tablets and fat pencils”
• “Resilience Gap” Analysis: Fault Tree – “The world becoming more turbulent faster than we can build
our resilience.”– “The essence of being resilient is to learn without experience.”
Response 4: Strategic Resilience
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
• Imaginative thinking• Resource-scarce innovation• Robust design• Adaptive fitness• Sisu (collective toughness, inner
strength—scrapiness!)
5 Requisites of a Resilient Org
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
People Factors
·Training/Specialty/Certification·Appropriate Authority/ Licensure·Number Sufficiency
AND
· Safety/Health/Nature of Threat· Mobility/Access Dependent· Communication Dependent· Client/Customer Centeredness (e.g., clients
present vs. evacuated)· Administrative Support Dependant· Urgency/Danger to Clients· Task Volume/Calls for Service· Adversarial/Non-Adversarial/Regulatory· Public/Transparency of Government
Tools Factors
· Computer/Internet vs. Paper Record(s)· Telephone/Cell Phone· Vehicle Appropriate for the Circumstance· Shields/Barriers Available· Facilities/Office Space· Access to System Records (secondary)· Stocked Resources (diapers, formula, car
seats, walking canes, etc.)
Performance Factors(How Well/To What Degree)
· State and Federal Statutory Mandate· Mission Essential Functions· Business Continuity Plans and
Measures· Necessary to "Safeguard Life and
Health"· Favorable Public Opinion
AND
Resource Requirements: What Do We Need to Function?
Circumstances Factors
AND
ANDAND
People Factors
·Training/Specialty/Certification·Appropriate Authority/Licensure·Number Sufficiency
AND
· Safety/Health/Nature of Threat· Mobility/Access Dependent· Communication Dependent· Client/Customer Centeredness (e.g., clients
present vs. evacuated)· Administrative Support Dependant· Urgency/Danger to Clients· Task Volume/Calls for Service· Adversarial/Non-Adversarial/Regulatory· Public/Transparency of Government
Tools Factors
· Computer/Internet vs. Paper Record(s)· Telephone/Cell Phone· Vehicle Appropriate for the Circumstance· Shields/Barriers Available· Facilities/Office Space· Access to System Records (secondary)· Stocked Resources (diapers, formula, car
seats, walking canes, etc.)
Performance Factors(How Well/To What Degree)
· State and Federal Statutory Mandate· Mission Essential Functions· Business Continuity Plans and
Measures· Necessary to "Safeguard Life and
Health"· Favorable Public Opinion
AND
Resource Requirements: What Do We Need to Function?
Circumstances Factors
AND
ANDAND
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
What do you think?
“The more varied and intense the challenges that the organization can cope with, the more robust it is. Robustness is the capacity to accommodate multiple, different futures.” Liisa Valikangas
Low Frequency/High Severity Incidents: Black Swan or Red Herring?Texas Emergency Management Conference 2012
Questions?
That’s All Folks!!!
References:Peterson, John L., Out of the BluePosner, Richard A., Catastrophe: Risk and ResponseTaleb, N., The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Recommended