2011 brought us more evidence that we cannot predict all our risks. If you don’t believe me, check out the risk registers of News of the World/News Corp, Tokyo Electric Power Co or Pennsylvania State University and you should find the proof.
Hopefully during 2012 we will start to appreciate the need for the ‘art’ of Adaptive Capacity to balance the current obsession with the science of plans, procedures and process.
Certainly we have until December 21, 2012 to get our act together if the Mayan Risk Register is taken into account.
On the plus side, 2011 was good to me on the blog – bringing a 43% jump in traffic, which would seem to be driven by a 75% boost in visitors from search results.
Thanks to UK readers also, up 83% and into 3rd place on the list.
Shame that all these visitors rarely comment – but hopefully that will come in good time. Potentially commenters should note the Mayan Risk Register linked above and get your comments in ahead of the end of the world.
I was also pleased to find that one of the pieces I enjoyed writing (… from Piper Alpha to Deepwater Horizon ) was the most read single post for the year. Thanks to the promotion of the standards industry the series on AS/NZS 5050 is still the highest total hits for 2011, which is good as I have to pay to license those images.
2012 is only a day old and already we have the makings of some interesting and novel incidents emerging;
- In what must certainly be the first incident of the year (art least in Australia) the spire of the Melbourne Arts Centre caught fire during the midnight fireworks display. Some key learnings;
- Phone congestion at midnight impacted some callers raising the alarm
- Fire Brigade response hampered by number of people around precinct
- Predicted risks, or did they have to adapt on the night?
- H5N1 is back in the news – with a death in China, where the person was not known to have had direct contact with birds/poultry.
- With the experience of how people actually responded to the Swine Flu outbreak, perhaps we will get more sanity into our preparations for Avian Influenza this time around.
- But then there has always been a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt promoted around Avian Influenza and Pandemic.
Welcome to 2012, I have given the blog home page a bit of an overhaul, I hope people find it useful.
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear … to embrace, not eliminate, uncertainty!
Credit : The title of this post and the verse in closing are lyrics from Happy Christmas (war is over) by John Lennon
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