The Explorer's Wheel™

In April 2009, a killer 6.3 earthquake struck the historic town of L’Aquila in central Italy leaving 65,000 citizens homeless, damaging over 11,000 buildings, and killing 309 people.   On October 22, 2012 an Italian court held six seismologists and one public official who were members of a National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks criminally negligent for failing to warn the public. The court sentenced each of them to six years in prison and a fine totaling nine million euros (almost $ 12 million) to be paid in compensation to the survivors. 

Although the prosecution presented evidence that the defendants had been derelict in warning the public of the significance of tremors which had occurred weeks before the actual earthquake, the court’s decision raises serious legal, scientific, and ethical questions. Even conceding that the scientists could have done more (and the scientists contest this premise) did their failures rise to a standard of criminality? Or was the City of L’Aquila itself negligent in failing adequately to warn its citizens; and if that is so, are the scientists merely the scapegoats for L’Aquila city officials’ own negligence? However, if the City is guilty, surely it is not alone. Virtually every city, county, and country around the world today is in the same position. Shall we hold officials in the State of Florida and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) criminally liable for failing to provide an adequate early warning about Hurricane Sandy which is already affecting 60 million people?
 
Indeed of all areas of law, the criminal law is perhaps the most unwieldy and the least well suited to solve such complex problems. We are operating today under an antiquated model which is impractical, unjust, and wildly uneconomic. Here are a few of its critical, largely unconscious, and certainly untested assumptions.
 

1. Earthquakes and other natural disasters are “Acts of God,” and there is not much we can do about them. In the language of negligence (tort) law they are “unforeseeable.”
2. Earthquakes in particular are inherently unpredictable.
3. Predicting earthquakes and attending to emergencies are government’s responsibilities.
4. The problem is so complex it can likely be solved only by experts, upon whom governments must primarily rely.
5. The public is ignorant and helpless; earthquake prediction and disaster response are not topics worthy of investment of public funds for education, exploration, and innovation.
6. The public must largely bear the costs of natural disasters except in those cases where the federal and state governments, depending on political expediency, decide to extend financial assistance; in fact, in some instances, laws such as the Price Anderson Act greatly limit legal liability in favored sectors such as the nuclear industry.
7. No two natural disasters are alike. It is not possible to develop a generic platform to predict and respond to all kinds of natural disasters.

There is substantial evidence to suggest we are entering an era of Catastrophic Geophysical Events, of large and destructive earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, occurring with a frequency unprecedented in the last 200-400 years.* Complex problems such as L’Aquila require us to think in a very different way from multiple dimensions and perspectives. A useful first step is to question our assumptions.

Challenging Basic Assumptions and Biases

1. Earthquakes may be “Acts of God,” but they are also natural phenomena and can be better understood and addressed more effectively. The field is ripe for innovation.
2. Mega-earthquakes can in fact be predicted with long lead times, and this platform can likely be adapted, analyzing different precursors, to other dangerous, but less catastrophic seismic events. The International Earthquake Volcano Prediction Center (IEVPC) in Orlando, Florida, has assembled an international advisory board of world class seismologists who are issuing alerts on 9 + earthquakes with over a year’s lead times, based on IEVPC’s proprietary methodology. (http://www.ievpc.org/). The basic platform can be applied to high alert areas such as the Cascadia Subduction Zone and could likely be adapted to other locations such as the Hayward and San Andreas faults in California.
3. The prediction and response to earthquakes and other natural disasters is indeed government’s responsibility; but solutions can be discovered more rapidly by a new, creative partnership with the public, as discussed below.
4. Experts definitely have an important role to play; but their contributions can be greatly enhanced through alliances with creative amateurs and citizen scientists.
5. An educated and involved public will save many lives. Indeed, it is the basis for an effective predictive/response regime.
6. Making the public pay for the costs of government incompetence, especially the very poor who will be most affected and least able to bear this misery, is unjust, not worthy of a modern society, and can no longer be accepted.
7. In the new age of crowd sourcing it is possible to build a generic platform which learns from each vertical application, beginning with earthquakes.

 
An Explorers’ Collaborative Innovation Network (E-COIN) (2013-2015)
 
An Explorers’ Wheel is a super-network of on-and off-line learning communities focused with laser precision on solving one core challenge (called the “Core Discovery Puzzle –CDP”). In this instance, it would be the accelerated development of more powerful tools to predict and more effectively respond to earthquakes and other natural disasters. The ultimate goal is to save millions of lives and $ billions in property and other losses. One important objective of the E-COIN is to provide a coherent framework for a new dialogue between seismologists and emergency management professionals, between government officials and the lay public, and among special interest groups. A second goal is to cultivate and to unleash the vast creative potential of ordinary citizens by introducing them to the specialized knowledge involved and providing powerful tools to solve the CDP. There is ample precedent in almost every domain of science of the significant contributions of “creative amateurs,” or citizen scientists as they are called in Europe, who are applying their knowledge from other fields to the challenges at hand. In an E-COIN explorers will have access at no cost to a Discovery/Invention/Innovation Engine, which will help them generate new ideas and inventions, virtually on demand. The E-COIN will build the innovation infrastructure as an open source, Creative Commons. It will offer prizes and other incentives for citizen scientists to reveal freely their inventions, while at the same time encouraging researchers to build “mega-patents”, patent pools, and other forms of collaborative intellectual property with non-exclusive licenses back to the participants in the E-COIN.
 
The E-COIN can ensure its own financial viability. It is based on a “smart” platform which enables the E-COIN continuously to learn about the special interests and challenges of each user and to provide them with fresh insights and new knowledge, with each click of a smart device. Initial financing will be garnered from Charter Sponsors who will receive a triple bottom line return on their investment: a superior commercial return along with tangible and measurable benefits to society and the environment. The main revenues will come from advertisers. The E-COIN will generate an intelligent data base by harvesting the stories of potentially millions of its participants. Participants on the other hand will decide, under the E-COIN’s transparent privacy policy, precisely what information they choose to make available and will vote on which advertisers will be invited to present their products and services. This intelligent data base will command a premium from advertisers, because it will deliver a defined, well vetted, potentially huge market. With a modest initial amount of funding from Charter Sponsors, the E-COIN will likely be producing initial breakthroughs in 2013, have advanced to its next generation by 2014, and be already applying its knowledge of earthquakes to other natural disasters by 2015.
 
Summary
 
Complex scientific and societal problems such as the prediction of natural disasters demand a new model of public innovation and engagement. An E-COIN harnesses the power of social media but with a dedicated purpose. An E-COIN is based on the core insight that innovation must proceed continuously and at every level of society, in every domain; and at the core of such “innovation integration” lies a new way of thinking and engaging with the world-- multi-dimensionally. Multi-dimensional thinking transforms earthquake prediction and society’s response into a portal for continuous personalized lifelong learning, which is an ancillary benefit for participants. Moreover, an E-COIN presents a new financing model which will ensure its sustainability, while extending support to its many allied groups and organizations. In this sense an E-COIN may provide a solution to the core problem of financing which today bedevils a myriad of other worthy causes.

©Copyright, Julian Gresser, October 28, 2012, All rights reserved. Julian Gresser is the Chairman of Global Innovation Integrators (GII/http://gii.us.com/) and the author of Piloting Through Chaos—The Explorer’s Mind (Bridge 21 Press, May 2013), the world’s first “smart” book, which introduces a new way of thinking and engaging creatively with the world. The author expresses his appreciation to John Casey, founder and Chairman of IEVPC, for his advice and insights.