RLC Foundation Event – Autumn Lecture Thursday 29 September 2016
The second RLC Foundation sponsored Autumn Lecture took place at the HQ RLC Officers’ Mess on Thursday 29 September 2016. The RLC Foundation theme for 2016 is “harnessing data and technology” and attracted a capacity audience from Industry, Academia and the Army. The guest lecturer for the evening was Dr Scott Steedman CBE FREng, Director of Standards BSI. Dr Steedman has been an Adviser to the US Army Corps of Engineers for 20 years and was part of the task force deployed to establish what had caused such catastrophic devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Dr Steedman gave an excellent presentation on how “data and technology is used to improve resilience, using an analysis of Hurricane Katrina and it’s devastation of the city of New Orleans”.
This fascinating insight into the problems that were faced by the analyst’s and emergency workers post Hurricane Katrina kept the 80 strong audience enthralled throughout the lecture. There followed a very lively question and answer session which focused in on the provenance and reliability of data pre and post Hurricane Katrina and the need to have quantitative and robust risk assessments in place within real world simulation systems modelling. It was agreed that ‘impressive’ data should always be questioned and decisions made are based on actual evidence.
Everyone enjoyed a curry supper afterwards and the lively banter confirmed that an excellent evening was had by all.
