Engineers are, of course, intelligent and yet fundamentally simple folk. They see a situation in quite a binary manner. There could be a flood, therefore there should be a better barrier, is Dr Bloore's attitude. Normally I'd write that off as one of those charming One-or-Zero attitudes from an engineer, and ignore him.
But it's the report from the Environment Agency that worried me:
"It also said major changes including a new barrier were unlikely until 2070 as a one-in-1,000-year flood would not occur until then."Or is it just me?
There are 53 years until 2070. That's not 1,000 years. But that's not how one-in-1,000 works. That says to me that, ignoring back-loading of risks due to global warming (and they seem to be ignoring that anyway) there's a slightly more than 5% risk of a one-in-1000 year flood. Or to put it another way - if the value of damage to London of a one-in-1000 year flood is 20 times more than the cost of an improved barrier, then we ought to get on with the barrier.
I reckon we need a bigger barrier.
We in Europe's Valley of the Kings* (or Jersey as you know it) understood a while back that million-to-one chances generally occur about nine times out of ten. Snow is supposed to happen once in about twenty years - we had have enough snowfall for the island to grind to a standstill three times in fifteen months.
ReplyDelete* This is not a joke.
Valley of Kings?
DeleteValley of Kings?
DeleteValley of Kings?
Delete"Engineers are, of course, intelligent and yet fundamentally simple folk. They see a situation in quite a binary manner."
ReplyDeleteYes I do!