The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Avian Flu Mash-Up Map

Declan Butler, a nature and science reporter, has compiled an example of the power that is now in the hands of individuals. Using commercially available software and data from an Excel spreadsheet and Google Earth, he has created an interactive map tracing the spread of Avian Flu in birds and humans from September 2003 - April 2006.

Butler details the process on his blog.

As Tim O'Reilly writes in his post How to Prepare for a Pandemic:

It's easy to dismiss ideas like these as unnecessarily alarmist.  But I'm a big fan of the idea from scenario planning that the goal is not to get the future "right", but rather to imagine enough challenging eventualities that you build a strategy that is robust in the face of a range of possible futures.

Importance of Scenarios

In this month's edition of Atlantic Monthly, there are some glimpses at possible futures for the US War on Terror that will curl your toes and straighten your hair.

Richard Clarke, the former White House expert on terrorism, crafts a bleak, but credible scenario titled Ten Years Later; it is written as an imagined transcript of the "Tenth Anniversary 9/11 Lecture" delivered by a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

As in-house counterterrorism expert with an 11-year term serving Clinton and both Bush administrations, Richard Clarke's Atlantic scenario is designed to make us think about the unintended consequneces of policy decisions since 9/11.

The piece weaves together a history of renewed attacks on US shopping malls, rail infrastructure, public transportation and even Las Vegas casinos and "Mouseworld".

Why would anyone do this? Why put such a terrifying scenario out there?

Because scenarios are tools for thinking through possible futures.