Seems a reasonable question – although in my case, it commits the error which people in my line refer to as “assuming a fact not yet in evidence.” Which is to say – I didn’t know that it took so long to evacuate on ocean liner until I read this nice piece by Michelle Tsai in Slate.  Turns out an ocean liner sank of the coast of Greece last week. And I think I’m so well-informed. From Tsai’s piece:

A cruise ship

, the Sea Diamond, ran into a reef off the coast of Santorini, Greece, on April 5, tearing a hole in the hull that sank the vessel 15 hours later. The nearly 1,600 passengers and crew didn’t get off the ship for three hours. Why does an emergency evacuation take hours?

Slower evacuations are safer. According to the International Maritime Organization’s Safety of Life at Sea guidelines, the crew of a ship must be able to lower all the passengers in lifeboats within half an hour, once everyone onboard has been “mustered,” or gathered from throughout the ship. But captains don’t always evacuate that quickly, because a hasty exit can be dangerous. Panicky passengers can injure themselves as they run, shove one another, and collide in the chaos of flight. Evacuees aren’t their normal selves; one study (click for PDF) found that 70 percent of passengers are bewildered with impaired reasoning after serious maritime incidents, 15 percent exhibit irrational behaviors like uncontrollable weeping, and only 15 percent remain calm and alert.

These dangers might be acceptable in a critical emergency; for example, if a ship were quickly taking on water and about to sink. But in less dire situations, the ship’s master will tend to use all the available time to ensure a safe evacuation. Even with the Sea Diamond‘s three-hour evacuation, though, some passengers suffered broken arms. The captain might also hold up the evacuation while he or she gathers more information about what’s happening. A captain won’t abandon a vessel unless it’s sure to sink, since even a damaged ship offers more protection than a life raft.

Tsai’s done a good job of explaining a complicated problem (it’s part of a series called The Explainer; we’re given to believe that in the Bush White House, the Explainer position has been  eliminated, but we’re sort of sorry they did) and has clearly done her homework.

Let me recap – and draw an inference or two:

• speed is dangerous  – especially in things you’ve not practiced
  
• It’s hard to drill things in places where the population changes every week or two – like a cruise ship
• which might mean that – with transient populations – the setting of standards perhaps ought to be different – than, say, for evacuating an aircraft carrier full of disciplined, good-physical-shape, high level of esprit de corps types

I’m not taking the position that the SOLAS standards are inadequate. Also – despite being a big Battlestar Galactica fan – the proportion of the world population in transit on cruise ships at any given time being relatively small – I’m a bit more worried about my own neighborhood, and others like it.

For instance,

• how long does it take to evacuate a subway station with only one exit?
• why are subway emergency exits not always well-marked (answer – in part because the authorities are concerned about homeless people – in part because they’re concerned about people like me at an earlier age – well past the statutes of limitations, folks, rest assured 

  – who like to check out underground spaces.

• How many New York City high-rises actually do fire drills which involve actually evacuating the building – and not just all meeting at the elevator landing?

According to Treehugger, the Colorado Rockies have added a solar array to their stadium.

Via Treehugger. 

We’re reminded that “Colorado Rockies” is the name of a sports team (perhaps baseball) – and not, in this context, a reference to the mountain range which so moved John Denver that he wrote at least one song about it.

“Rocky Mountain High” is now one of the official songs of the State of Colorado.

See Denver Post article – Jennifer Brown, “‘Rocky Mountain High’ now 2nd state song/John Denver’s 1970s ballad gets OK as second state song”, Denver Post, March 13, 2007. Link here.

I’ll take this opportunity to note that I’ve always been partial to John Denver’s cover of “Please, Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas, whose lyrics include the following:

Just last year when I was only seven
And now Im almost eight as you can see
You came home at a quarter past eleven

Fell down underneath our Christmas tree

(chorus)

Please Daddy, dont get drunk this Christmas
I dont wanna see my Mumma cry
Please Daddy, dont get drunk this Christmas
I dont wanna see my Mumma cry

Words and music by Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert. Lyrics here. 

By Sally Adee, in GeoTimes:

On Feb. 15, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) unveiled its new design of the international symbol for radiation. Dozens of accidental exposures to radiation motivated this change. In 1987, for example, four people in Brazil died when they dismantled an abandoned cancer treatment machine, and in 2001, four men fell ill after they disassembled generators at a Russian nuclear-powered lighthouse.

“Too many people are injured each year by finding large sources of radiation and not understanding what the trefoil — the international symbol for radiation — means,†says Carolyn Mac Kenzie, a radiation source specialist with IAEA. “Many people are either injured or killed in these events.â€

Initiated in 2001, the project was intended to supplement the familiar radiation symbol, the yellow-on-black three-cornered trefoil, which was designed to be simple and conspicuous to prevent it from getting lost among the plethora of easily ignored warnings. But IAEA discovered that simplicity presented problems. Children all over the world consistently identified the radiation hazard symbol as a propeller.

The new triangular sign features the trefoil with radiating waves, a skull and crossbones, and a running man against a bright red background. Graphic designers and radiation experts spent five years refining the symbol to give a clear warning to anyone who might stumble across a radioactive device. The Gallup Institute tested the new design on 1,650 people in 11 countries to confirm that all population groups, regardless of age, sex or level of education, knew immediately that the symbol conveyed danger. The symbol is intended to be universal, and to especially protect individuals whose cultural backgrounds have not prepared them to fear the trefoil, or even radioactivity, Mac Kenzie says.

IAEA intends to place the symbol on all new small radioactive sources, such as food irradiators and cancer treatment machines. The sign will not be plainly visible on the outside of these machines to avoid alarming people in everyday settings; instead, it will be apparent inside the machines if dismantled.

The new radioactive symbol is not slated for use on nuclear waste drums or nuclear waste storage sites, such as the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico that houses military radioactive waste. For these long-term storage facilities, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy have been working with archaeologists, linguists and astronomers, among other varied experts, on a symbol that might suggest danger 10,000 years from now — not an easy task. Like the new IAEA symbol, the overarching goal is to come up with a symbol that would convey danger to people who could not read nor understand common languages. “It is probable that [the new radiation symbol] would be incorporated†into that design, says Roger Nelson, chief scientist at WIPP.

 

Diesel fuel, delivered to United States troops on the field in Iraq. In this post At Defense Tech, Haninah Levine discussed the friction created by the cost of delivering fuel in the field – and the alternatives – including portable solar and wind generators.

No reference of the Navy’s Solar Eagle proposal – to use networked solar panels – on the roof of every building in Iraq – to make the Iraqi power grid more robust and resistant to insurgent attack. You can find a link to the proposal at FAS (the Federation of American Scientists).

And a thoughtful discussion of the Solar Eagle proposal here on the Kaedrin weblog.

Beautiful images from Stanza   – generated by an array of sensors placed around a city. Stanza – we’re not sure yet  if that’s he, she, orthey – appears to be using a variety of sensors – gathering data about noise, light, radiation, and other things.

Here at Popular Logistics, we don’t know much about art, but we do know what we like. And these images are beautiful.  But since we’re not here to talk about art (or qualified), we point out the following. The late Jack Maple demonstrated that it was possible to radically reduce crime with good data, paper maps, and colored push-pins. And available resources. Stanza’s data maps

could be used to similar effect to address all manner of problems.

Via Visual Complexity

Permeable (that is, water-

permeable) sidewalks is an example of the confluence which is the principal principle (or conceit, if you like) of Popular Logistics. 

  There are at least two materials from which permeable sidewalks are made – a type of concrete and a hard rubber composite.

Here’s how it works: like a sidewalk. The weight of people and objects are borne by the sidewalk. But not liquid, which goes through.

Three welcome consequences:

1. Trees planted near sidewalks get watered right through the sidewalk; their roots don’t need to keep travelling laterally to seek water, bursting through the sidewal. Tree gets to live; sidewalk doesn’t need to be replaced as often; tree continues its photosynthesis thing – and often cools the street and houses, making people more comfortable and reducing the need for air-conditioning. (We assume that all Popular Logistics readers are sufficiently caffeinated to make the next jump – that this creates a net reduction in energy consumption. Stay with me- this is only one immediate effect – and look at all these benefits.
2. Water doesn’t pool on sidewalks, creating mosquito habitats.
3. Water – once on the sidewalk – doesn’t evaporate – but can make it back into the water table, making more water available.
4. During floods, the environment has additional capacity to absorb water – at least mitigating the effects of the flood.

The University of Alabama Cooperative Extension Service has a press release about their project – with an extensive set of links to information about permeable or “pervious” sidewalks. Given the sound of “pervious” – I think we’ll stick with “permeable” for the time being.

Link here. Tip of the hat – or the chapeau de fromage to IT goddess Lauren Dohr.