In a previous post, we featured mobile apps designed as multi-sided platforms useful in the aftermath of a natural disaster, political crisis, or in the case of an ongoing crime incident or safety emergency.  These platforms function in larger ecological and industrial ecosystems with many variables that need to be maintained and addressed in order for business operations, public works, or civic life to gradually stabilize after a disaster.

Disaster conditions will clearly be more impactful and more frequent due to the impact of climate change. The domestic terrorism threat stateside is becoming a constant, with the impact and frequency of growing domestic U.S. political instability and public safety incidents to be determined.

We will need systems that are monitoring these temporal, ephemeral ecosystems and providing insights and recommendations for real-time decision-making support and situational awareness analysis, designed with redundancy and zero fault mechanisms in mind and not dependent on the current electrical grid.

If you have been through a severe weather event or a political catastrophe complete with infrastructure disruption and violence, you learn very quickly that it is not the precipitating event, but the success or failure of the disaster response (the aftermath) that is the real source of issues related to personal safety. 

We are entering an era when on-the-ground conditions and real-time disaster-level information flows grow in their value in the aftermath of more frequent and mounting disaster conditions.

Is there a wave of democratization of access to tools and/or product commercialization ahead in this space?  It is to be seen if necessity is the mother of invention in the creation of an innovative disaster safety marketplace. For now, the following are some current signals and use cases from recent events.

In August, Bob Gourley had a far-ranging conversation with Sir David Omand. One of the most respected intelligence professionals in the world, Omand is also the author of the book How Spies Think: Ten lessons in intelligence. In May of 2020, Bob’s OODAcast conversation was with Carmen Medina, who served 32 years in senior positions at the Central Intelligence Agency, most of which focused on one of the hardest tasks in the community, that of analysis. 

These two conversations hit on topics such as disinformation, cognitive bias, cognitive traps, biased decision-making during the pandemic, strategic action, the paradox of warning, and decision-making.

This most recent Russian election provides clear evidence that the Russian Government is meddling as much in their own elections, to achieve the Kremlin-designed outcome, as they have in recent American elections  – with one RFE/RL headline proclaiming:  “Hacking Servers. Online Blocking. Police Raids. Information Attacks. What Won’t The Kremlin Do To Stop ‘Smart Voting’?”

This election is also seen by many Russians as a precursor to the 2024 Presidential election.  In 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s super-majority United Russia ruling party amended the Russian Constitution, allowing Putin to seek two more terms as president and potentially remain in office until 2036.