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It blows my mind how little we pay attention to #water systems in the US. We talk about ‘developing countries’ or ‘sh*tholes’, ignorant about the dire situation 52k water systems face right here in the #US. @VarunaIoT 1/15
The water system requires an understanding of #complexsystems and failures points within systems. Thankfully, Dr. Richard Cook already wrote the ‘How Systems Fail’ treatise (for public health systems), and I’ll apply to our water systems in the US. 2/15 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228797158_How_complex_systems_fail
Complex systems are intrinsically hazardous systems: we know the constituents of your water in real-time UNTIL it leaves the treatment plant. In the pipes? Little to no visibility. 2020 has seen 10's of thousands of violations. That’s a HUGE issue 3/15 https://obipublic.epa.gov/analytics/saw.dll?PortalPages
Complex systems are heavily and successfully defended against failure. Until they’re not. We don’t know what to defend against because the #EPA hasn’t updated the contaminants list/defenses required for decades 4/15 https://amzn.to/3fk7MPN
Catastrophe requires multiple failures - single point failures are not enough. Flint’s, and thousands of other US cities, #water issue was a convergence of multiple failures. 5/15 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/poisoned-water/
Complex systems run in degraded mode and the ASCE gives the US’s degrading water system a failing D grade. 6/15 https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_water/
6. (Unfortunately) catastrophe is always around the corner. And there are daily catastrophes in the #SJV region of the US (and many others, daily) 7/15: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/the-crisis-lurking-in-californians-taps-how-1000-water-systems-may-be-at-risk.html
We keep talking about the issue wrong! Post-accident attribution to a ‘root cause’ is fundamentally wrong and hindsight biases post-accident assessments of human performance. Again, see Flint point above and ‘Rethinking Root Cause Analysis’ 8/15 https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/rethinking-root-cause-analysis#
We focus on infrastructure and ignore people. Human operators have dual roles: as producers and as defenders against failure. Human expertise in complex systems is constantly changing but we are failing to equip the fast retiring workforce of ‘producers and defenders’... 9/15
and many actors have failed to defend #poc and #blackpeople from the failures of our water systems 10/15 https://www.nrdc.org/resources/watered-down-justice
even as ~2/3rds of the water workforce is about to retire https://apnews.com/956c4d0fa1c94472acebdba5ce3ff1e5 and so we have to pay attention and start utilizing the new (and available #technology tools) 11/15
But even introducing new #tech is risky because ‘change introduces new forms of failure’. E.g. #AI in water systems does not matter if we have bad or no #data to train system models 12/15 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-value-aibig-data-water-utilities-seyi-fabode-2e
But we must use new tech and train new folk. To address risk (in old approaches and new tech) and accept that ‘actions at the sharp end resolve all ambiguity’. We have to change the business model of the industry to 'pay-for quality not usage amount' 13/15 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/near-future-water-cities-seyi-fabode-1e/
And, since we are rewriting the #rules of a few industries during and post- #COVID19, we can allocate the resources necessary, create wealth/opportunities, and improve the water system for every single citizen. Because clean water is a human right. 14/15 https://fortune.com/2020/07/28/trump-infrastructure-bill-climate-change-green-building-coronavirus-covid/
We have the technology and tools. But do we have the will to stop killing and poisoning people with water in America? I wholeheartedly believe we do (it's why we started @varunaiot) 15/15 https://khn.org/morning-breakout/number-of-kids-with-lead-poisoning-higher-than-expected-study-finds/
