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Some heads are going to roll over the Zhengzhou flood disaster - "The State Council has decided to establish an investigation team led by the Emergency Management Department. The team hired experts to provide technical support for the investigation." 1/11 http://xinhuanet.com/2021-08/02/c_1127722617.htm …
"The team will investigate the disaster response process in accordance with laws and regulations... summarize experience and lessons, propose disaster prevention and mitigation improvement measures, and hold accountable [any responsible] for dereliction of duty." 2/11
Interesting part of this to me is that there were at least 3 "smart city" initiatives in place to prevent just this kind of thing. As reported by SCMP, there was a tunnel warning system and a flood warning system - unclear whether either kicked in. 3/11https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3142898/china-floods-smart-city-system-capabilities-called-question-after …
But what has received less attention is that Zhengzhou was selected as a pilot "sponge city" in 2015 - and was five years into a 2017-2030 "sponge city" development plan when the flooding took place. 4/11 https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1598178903920054594&wfr=spider&for=pc …
Little background: A "sponge city" seeks to use green infrastructure to soak up rainwater and store it for re-use. But it is also a flood prevention measure. Zhengzhou gov had pledged to spend RMB 50+ billion by 2020 to implement. 5/11
Citizens have been criticizing the plan. Experts say criticisms are unfair, because the weather was extreme, "a sponge city is not a bucket city," and that you can't build infrastructure that will be underutilized for 999 years to prevent a once-in-a-thousand-year disaster. 6/11
While I agree that it's hard to out-engineer mother nature, the Zhengzhou plan specifically states that the purpose of several of its measures is to help prevent large-scale floods. To be fair, the plan was 10 years from being done, was not designed for such extremes. 7/11
That said, a well-built emergency response system, in tandem with a well-built "sponge city" system, should have helped prevent the loss of life. RMB 50 billion is a lot of money to spend on a system that doesn't. 8/11
Point being: it is not uncommon for local governments to implement smart city initiatives poorly because the central gov wants cities to roll out buzzy technology. 9/11
Other point being: All the smart tech in the world doesn't fix problems if the humans operating those systems are not well trained, or are not doing their jobs. Will be very interested to see what the investigation turns up. 10/11
Other other point being: It's important to note that "China" is not a monolith. The central government has long struggled to get local govs to follow through on "high-quality development," but this is much easier said than done. 11/11
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