Tjebbe van Tijen on Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:53:12 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> West and East Africa September 2009: floods and droughts & the luxury disasters of some other nations |
about the visualization of natural disasters and questions raised if the same technologies that do show us their workings & impact could help in if not preventing, lessening the effects on population and environment West and East Africa September 2009: floods and droughts & the luxury disasters of some other nations September 5, 2009 by Tjebbe van Tijen A series of messages of a friend (Fran?ois Laureys) on the social messaging system of FaceBook community who lives in West Africa alerted me to extra ordinary heavy rains and floodings in Burkino Fasso and other countries in the region. I had not seen any covering of this disaster on national Dutch television, and maybe missed it on BBC news, anyhow us Europeans are not ?flooded? with African news anyhow. It can be that the editors in command of our daily supply of misery are careful about the possible ?disaster fatigue? of their audience, but when a local disaster occurs in the low countries we can be sure that the flooded camping outside the village of Hoeksewaard ? however minor ? will get full attention. A recent example was the so called ?Weeralarm? (weather alarm) of our national meteorological institute KNMI because a combined storm and heavy rains were expected on August 20, 2009. Luckily the ?planned? storm did not come and the heavy rains failed to materialize, so many complaints did get in form organizers of the compulsive and commercial late summer outdoor festivals, that were either cancelled or delayed. Before, such nation wide offical alarms, everybody accepted the vicissitude of the weather, but now the eager business minds must have started to think up possible damage claim schemes. The national weather institute KNMI was quick to react and has scaled down their ?televisionized? national alarms. Anybody with a computer in this country ? my good guess is that there are even more computers than inhabitants in the Netherlands ? has instant access to the continuous weather radar and its efficient didactic visualizations so a greengrocer with an outside market stall can check the radar on his iphone and take the needed measures right in time. Those are the disasters of luxury that befall us here in Europe. read on... ======= the full documented and illustrated text can be found at The Limping Messenger http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/africa- september-2009-floods-and-droughts-the-luxury-disasters-of-other- nations/ Tjebbe van Tijen Imaginary Museum Projects Dramatizing Historical Information http://imaginarymuseum.org web-blog: The Limping Messenger http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org