In the Aftermath of Katrina: The Value of Modeling

While the emotions have ranged from anger to deep sorrow, many still ask the question "Why?" and "How?" a storm that had been forecasted days before as a powerful Category 5 hurricane with its target on New Orleans could have prompted less-than-stellar emergency preparation and response scenarios.

After all, this was not a spontaneous terrorist attack or an unpredictable earthquake, but rather a storm of epic proportions that forecasters had known about for two days before it hit. Perhaps we let our guard down because of Ivan, the Category 3 hurricane a few months earlier that did little damage to the Pensacola area. While hindsight is always 20/20, Katrina will nonetheless spawn a number of post-mortems on emergency response preparation in the post-911 era of the United States. Instead of focusing on the immediate effects, it is important to understand the bigger perspective of situations like these and the need for better planning based on accurate information.

Katrina, like 9/11, highlights the poor linkages that exist between sophisticated modeling, simulation, information analysis and policy. During 9/11, a number of reports that suggested the high probability of…