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This is a story written in January 2000 ,

From: Dale Puffenberger To: Paul Prueitt

Here is the sad story of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) Science Advisor.

After moving back to the States from Eritrea 3 years ago and getting connected to the internet for the 1st. time, I started searching for information on complexity and any work being done on application of complex systems science research to disaster related activities.

Finding none, I started contacting people and organizations. This is how the discussion group evolved. One of the people I contacted was the Science Advisor at OFDA. I have know this person for several years but never had any sort of a relationship with him. I told him what I was looking for and asked if he knew of any efforts in the area of complexity/disasters.

He told me that he had a discussion *once* with a friend of his at the NSF in which his friend attempted to explain the impact of complex systems science on the field of engineering. That's it, that's the OFDA Science Advisor!!

Let me elaborate.

My major experiences range from drought relief, the refugee assistance program in Somalia, disaster planning/response in Haiti (pre and post Duvalier) air crash simulations, putting together air safety conferences, a report for the International Disaster Advisory Committee on Community/Private Sector interaction in disaster planning/response and working on the development of a famine early warning system.

Really I've been blessed. I say this with all humility - I don't know anyone who has had the diversity of experience I've had related to disasters. That doesn't mean there isn't anybody, I just don't know them. Faced with 35 refugee camps full of sick old men and women, starving babies with the highest rates of malnutrition the CDC had ever recorded (up to that point), with no trucks, no fuel and no food, any vestige of self importance, power or personal ambition doesn't get suppressed, it get gets crushed into oblivion - mercifully.

*Just in time mediation* sounds like a good name for what we really do.

I feel disaster plans are pretty worthless - a planning process is invaluable because it is the anticipation that opens up our minds. From experience I see that the concept of disaster management is an oxymoron.

I am much more comfortable with disaster coping - mediation works just as well. I can vote for replacing disaster planning and disaster management with *just in time mediation.* The former concepts are relics of reductionist thinking and hierarchical systems and are very limiting in dealing with reality.

I have followed your postings at NECSI for some time and recently with VCU. I have flagged your postings mentioning natural disasters and terrorism and many times have been tempted to contact you off-list.

When the discussion references ideas developed elsewhere in writings I am not familiar with such as Godel, Turing or Popper, I am lost, it's like everyone is talking in shorthand. When concepts are being discussed and bandied back and forth reach some consensus like natural/formal systems, decisions, incomplete information, science and mysticism - I can follow fairly well.

But I have felt that there is a void, an incompleteness if you will, where disasters should fit in but because of their nature (which I do not understand) they only partially fit. It is not just abrupt change in relationships within the system which don't seem to fit in anywhere. Left alone, the relationships will reestablish or not, develop in new and different ways, evolve but when we inject other agents into the system what do we have, what do we call it?

Richard Steel helped me out Jan. 6 with his NECSI posting: "I've recently been thinking that it may, in some cases, be useful to distinguish three kinds of complex system - those with simple agents (CAs and some physical systems, etc.), those with complex agents (e.g. most biological systems) and those with complex agents which have intentionality (i.e. people)

Intentionality caught my attention.

I have a small discussion group but it's not very active. Yaneer is a member of the group. Louise Comfort of the University of Pittsburgh, author of several articles and a book on some aspects of Disasters and Complexity and probably the most active academician in the U.S. is in the group. Gus Kohler, California Research Bureau and former Director of Medical Services, California Emergency Services and Keith Donnally both on the NECSI list are members. There are 2 fellows from Los Alamos Nat'l. Lab, Norman Johnson and Steen Rasmussen who claim they are working on something related to urban disasters but cannot or will not discuss their work. The same with a fellow from FEMA (I'll spare you my thoughts on FEMA)