Black Swans Archives

Risk Management Guideline for Engineers

The Canadian Engineering Qualifications Board (CEQB) recently published a Risk Management Guideline for engineers. This post discusses some of the concepts and draws parallels with another upcoming publication. Our general comments on Risk Management Guideline for Engineers We saw a number of good points in the Guideline, for instance: a glossary, the clear call for hazard identification, some examples, and finally and perhaps more than anything, the fact it fosters engineers’ awareness for risks. We fully empathize with the desire to generate…

The Ten Plagues of Egypt and our world at the transition between the Electromechanical and the Cyberinformational Era on our planet.

In a prior post we discussed large scale water contamination. We related it to a planetary plague, with dear consequences unless we decide to “rewrite” the future. We imagined how, unless we take robust decisions, in a distant future, archaeologists will likely find books or some records relating events that are occurring under our eyes, namely wide-spread water contamination. They may consider them like the first Plague of Egypt. What is the relationship between The Ten Plagues of Egypt and…