Podcasts about catastrophic risk management

A NEW BILL being considered by the U.S. Senate would create an interdepartmental committee to plan for a global catastrophe—the kind that could mean the end of humanity. The U.S. has had continuity of government plans in effect for decades, but those are intended to preserve the government through a nuclear attack. Why expand the scope to surviving a potentially world-ending event? Why now? More to the point, is this in any way connected to the arrival of asteroid Apophis in 2029?

SPEAKERS Ian I. Mitroff Ph.D., Senior Research Affiliate, The Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, University of California, Berkeley; Professor Emeritus, Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California; Author, Techlash: The Future of the Socially Responsible Tech Organization Melanie Ensign CEO and Founder, Discernible, Inc.; Press Department Lead, DEF CON; Former Global Head of Security, Privacy & Engineering Communications, Uber; Former Security Communications Manager, Facebook Gerald Harris President, Quantum Planning Group; Chair, Technology & Society Member-Led Forum—Moderator In response to the Coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, this program took place and was recorded live via video conference, for an online audience only, and was live-streamed from The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on July 23rd, 2020.

Emery Roe is the author of Making the Most of Mess: Reliability and Policy in Today's Management Challenges (Duke UP 2014). Roe is senior associate with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Roe's book navigates between economics, ecology, and public policy. He challenges the notion that all messes are bad, and points to how public administrations can learn from messes and turn them into good messes. In doing so, public administrators can better design regulatory and administrative regimes to deal with future financial, environmental, and related messes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emery Roe is the author of Making the Most of Mess: Reliability and Policy in Today’s Management Challenges (Duke UP 2014). Roe is senior associate with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Roe’s book navigates between economics, ecology, and public policy. He challenges the notion that all messes are bad, and points to how public administrations can learn from messes and turn them into good messes. In doing so, public administrators can better design regulatory and administrative regimes to deal with future financial, environmental, and related messes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emery Roe is the author of Making the Most of Mess: Reliability and Policy in Today’s Management Challenges (Duke UP 2014). Roe is senior associate with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Roe’s book navigates between economics, ecology, and public policy. He challenges the notion that all messes are bad, and points to how public administrations can learn from messes and turn them into good messes. In doing so, public administrators can better design regulatory and administrative regimes to deal with future financial, environmental, and related messes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emery Roe is the author of Making the Most of Mess: Reliability and Policy in Today’s Management Challenges (Duke UP 2014). Roe is senior associate with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Roe’s book navigates between economics, ecology, and public policy. He challenges the notion that all messes are bad, and points to how public administrations can learn from messes and turn them into good messes. In doing so, public administrators can better design regulatory and administrative regimes to deal with future financial, environmental, and related messes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emery Roe is the author of Making the Most of Mess: Reliability and Policy in Today’s Management Challenges (Duke UP 2014). Roe is senior associate with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Roe’s book navigates between economics, ecology, and public policy. He challenges the notion that all messes are bad, and points to how public administrations can learn from messes and turn them into good messes. In doing so, public administrators can better design regulatory and administrative regimes to deal with future financial, environmental, and related messes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Bea worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Royal Dutch Shell around the world. His research and teaching have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is co-founder of Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UCB.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon and welcome to spectrum. My name is Chase Jakubowski and I'll be the host of today's show. Today we present part two of our two interviews with Robert B professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. [00:01:00] Dr B served as an engineer for the U S Army Corps of Engineers, Shell oil, shell development and Royal Dutch Shell. His work has taken them to more than 60 locations around the world. Has Engineering work, has focused on marine environments, is research and teaching, have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is cofounder of the Center for catastrophic risk management at UC Berkeley in part two. Brett swift asks professor B about the California Delta balancing development and environmental conservation and shoreline retreat. [00:01:30] Is civil engineering misunderstood Speaker 4: or do people simply have a love hate relationship with the built environment? I think a mixture of civil engineering has been changing, so people's preconceived views in many cases are out of date and it's also low of, hey, when the built in art man bite you, it hurts and [00:02:00] hurt, encourages. Hey, there is a big reliance on it though at the same time as well. Yes. Airports, bridges, tunnels, water supply system, sewage supply, large ill NGS. That's our game. We're out of Egypt and Rome. That's where we got our start. And now the new term is infrastructure. Yes. To sort of put all that together into one idea. Yes. [00:02:30] Are there landscapes scale projects out there that people should be aware of and cognizant of? Yeah, that are underway or have recently completed? Yes. One we've been watching carefully is location than the other lunch and it's what's called the water works and the reason we zoom in closely is it's an excellent laboratory test bed for a comparable [00:03:00] problem we face here in California with aren't California Delta infrastructure systems. Speaker 4: Now the Lens, much more comeback, but it deals with an unforgiving test that's the North Sea. And so they've been learning actually over a period of 3000 years. How would it work in a constructive collaborative way with water? We face the same problem here at home. [00:03:30] Often the attention associated with civil engineering projects is due to the tension between environmental degradation and economic gain. Is it possible to have balance when you're doing something on this kind of scale? Answer is yes and it's a term bounce. Nature itself can be extremely destructive to itself. Watch an intense [00:04:00] storm attack, a sensitive reef area in the ocean. The tension and it can be constructive if it's properly managed, is we need to develop these systems, some of which need to make money and at the same time we need to ensure that what is being achieved there is not being degraded, destroyed by unintended consequences [00:04:30] to the environment. Speaker 4: One of the very good things that happened to civil engineering here at Berkeley is we changed our name. We're known as civil and environmental and that's to bring explicit this tension between built works, the natural works, and for God's sakes, remember we have a planet that we've got to live on for a long time. As engineers, we are still [00:05:00] learning how to deal with that tension and particularly when something's on a really large scale, best of intentions going forward, body of knowledge at the time you do the project, how do you know what the environmental impacts are going to be? Those unintended impacts reveal themselves. How do you walk these things back? How do you backtrack from having installed something on a landscape level? That clunky question. [00:05:30] That's one of the reasons for my fascination with the Netherlands, but the way I've worked there for a year, complements of previous employer [inaudible] is Royal Dutch Shell, so I was there learning all the dodge had confronted flooding from the North Sea and essentially the approach was built a big dam wall between you and at [00:06:00] water, you're on the dry site and it's on wet side. They promptly learned that was not good. The in fact heavily polluted areas that they were attempting to occupy and suddenly a new thing started to show in their thinking called give water room so that today they have actually sacrificed areas back to the open ocean [00:06:30] to get water. The room needs to do what it needs today and in the end the entire system has been improved. We've been trying to take some of those hard won lessons back to our California Delta Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 6: You were [00:07:00] listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Brad swift is interviewing Bob Bobby, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talk about the California Delta Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 7: We've talked about the delta a bit. Do you want to expand on the challenges of the Delta and [00:07:30] the downside? Speaker 4: Well, I'll start with the downside. One of the things I used to say in class when I was still teaching here is terror is a fine instructor. Okay. So the downside would be if we had what we call the ultimate catastrophe and it's foreseeable and in fact predictable [00:08:00] in our delta, we would be without an extremely important infrastructure system. For a period of more than five years. That includes fresh supply for small cities like Los Angeles and San Diego and small enterprises like the Central Valley Agricultural Enterprise. So the picture makes Katrina New Orleans look like a place [00:08:30] story. This is big time serious. You'd say hooky bomb. That's a pretty dismal picture. Why? And the answer is back to this risk crepe. The delta infrastructure systems started back in the gold rush days and we want to add some agricultural plans that we built, piles of dirt that I've called disrespectfully [inaudible]. And then we put in transportation [00:09:00] roadways, power supply, electrical power, and then we come up with a bright idea of transporting water from the north side of the delta to the South side of the Gel so we can export orders. Speaker 4: Southern California. Those people need water too. Well, it's all defend it by those same piles or hurt built back in the 1850s it's got art, gas storage under some of those islands and our telecommunications goes through there. [00:09:30] Our railroads go through air, so if you lose critical parts, those piles there, you got big problems. We can foresee it, we can in fact analyze, predict it. We've in fact quantified the risk. They are clearly unacceptable. We've talked to the people who have political insight and power. They are interested to the point of understanding [00:10:00] it and then they turn and ask, well, how do you solve the problem? Well, at this point we say we don't know yet, but we do know it's gonna take a long time to solve perhaps much like the Netherlands, 50 a hundred years. And you can see a Lee blank because there's a two to four year time window. What's this? 50 to a hundred years. Oh, can you tell me about tomorrow's problem? And tomorrow solutions [00:10:30] answer, no, this one's not that. So we've run into her stone wall. Speaker 7: So does it then become something that gets tacked on to all the other things that they want to do with the water? Because there's always a new peripheral canal being proposed. Right? Right. And the north south issue on water's not going away. So for some 50 years solution to happen in California politics, you'd have to have a pretty serious [00:11:00] consensus north and south to the shared interests there. Correct. And there's no dialogue about that really? No. Within the state, no. How about within the civil engineering community? Within the state? No. So everyone wants to ignore the obvious threat to the, so the California economy because basically you're talking about have you applied a cost to the a catastrophic event of the Delta failing? Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we thought that. Or Action Katrina, who Orleans [00:11:30] ultimately has caused the United States in excess of a hundred bill young as ours. Paul that by five or 10 because just the time extent. The population influence though we're talking about hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars. So the economic consequences of doing nothing or horrible and then you'd say, [00:12:00] well, is it possible to fix it? Answer is yes. Well, do you know exactly how? No, we don't. That's going to take time to work through. It also takes key word. You mentioned collaboration. Different interests are involved and we need to learn how to constructively and knowledgeably liberate the signings to say, here's a solution that makes sense to the environmental conscience [00:12:30] in the environment. Here's a sense or a solution makes sense to the social commercial, industrial complex. Hey, we might have a solution here. Let's start experimenting it. We don't have the basis for that lot and consequently it slips back into our busy backgrounds. Much like the San Pedro LPG tanks that are still sitting air. It's in the background and the clock is ticking Speaker 7: and the Dutch model [00:13:00] doesn't help them see how it could evolve. Speaker 4: It doesn't seem to, they sort of have distanced the experience from the Netherlands and saying, well, we could never come to an agreement like that. Of course, as soon as you say that, that's the death coming to an agreement like that. Speaker 7: Well maybe they don't see the impending danger as existential as the Dutch do. Speaker 4: I think that's very true. The Dutch can just walk [00:13:30] outside of their homes. Many of them walk up one of those levees and on the other side they see what's happening. The North Sea is big and mean and ever present and they've got one common enemy, so to speak, and that set ocean and they got to stop the flooding, but yet they can't damage the environment. So they've had to come to grips one with themselves. One more the environment and the long term view. We could do it. We haven't. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 6: [00:14:00] Spectrum is a public affairs show on k a l Ex Brooklyn. Brett swift is with our guests, Professor Robert B of UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talked about Shortline retreat and regulation of oil and gas extraction Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:14:30] with the sea level rise and with storms becoming more volatile and surges from the oceans becoming real factors on shorelines. How should communities and nations approach the idea retreating from the ocean? Speaker 4: Well, again, thankful to our brothers and sisters and Europe. [00:15:00] They're several decades ahead of us in asking and answering exactly that question. They've developed three strategies. They look at existing locations. They then examine each of the three strategies to see which makes longterm sense. The first strategy is fight. A good example would be United Kingdom, the tims flood [00:15:30] barrier. Yeah, you might like to move London, but to not gonna move it very quick easily. And so the answer comes back we need to defend, but you only defend what you can defend, which means you don't try and defend the entire coast of England. You defend small parts of it that can be adequately defended. That's the fight strategy. The next one is flight. I call it get [00:16:00] out of dodge city. And so they say we need to stay age, a strategic withdrawal so that we withdrawal slowly surrendering back to the environment which needs to be surrendered back to the environment and eventually we're gone. The next one is freeze. What the mean is we'll occupy it until it's destroyed and then we're gone. As we looked at the coast, New York, [00:16:30] New Jersey after Sandy, I wish we had done some of that thinking. I hope we do some of that thinking for our California Delta. Speaker 7: I was thinking about civil engineering as it's applied in different parts of the world where a nation state is in a different stage of development. And how do you see civil engineering interacting in those environments differently and taking in risk management and how it's applied? Speaker 4: Well, I guess each society [00:17:00] has to go through its own learning experiences. You can always look at other society and say, oh they weren't very smart or they certainly could have done it this way, rather they did it. So we all into the after the game quarterbacking sort of Mo seems like each of these countries societies has to go through its own learning experience. [00:17:30] As I said earlier, those risk assessment and management businesses one damn thing after another and this learning transfer of insight forward seems to be as frustrating and difficult. Speaker 7: So offshore. Let's Speaker 4: talk about the challenges inherent in that. What do you think about the debate about the risk? How should that debate be framed? [00:18:00] The risks are higher, which means that likelihoods failure that you engineer into the system, it would be much lower, have to have backups in defense and depth and people who actually know they're doing the question is, will we in fact do it before we have a disaster? Don't tell me you think it's safe. Show me and demonstrate to me is that demand has not happened here in the u s yet. [00:18:30] I'm very concerned. For us, I think the government changed some of the permitting process. Is that window dressing? What does it have some real impact on how people behave in the field? It depends on geographically where you're ant Alaska has been very demanding at the Alaskan state level relative to oil and gas operations and when you see a signature [00:19:00] go home or permit, you can pretty well bet that there's sufficient documentation demonstration to justify that signature. Speaker 4: Other parts of the u s are less diligent and so it depends geographically where you're at and what you're dealing. Well, it's not actually reasonable to expect to be able to appropriately regulate, govern and industry [00:19:30] as powerful as the oil and gas industry was spotting governance. Governance needs to be consistent and when the signature goes on to a form that says, yes, I have the ability to immediately abate the source of a blow out. You have the ability the fire engine is built, it's in this station with trained people. Let's ring the bell and see if that fire engine can run. That hasn't happened yet. I [00:20:00] remain personally very concerned for these Oltra high risk operations we're considering in the United States wars. Does the same spottiness occur with fracking in terms of the application of best practices, everything up and able to learn is, yes. Speaker 4: By the way, franking has been underway for many decades. Industry actually hit this kind of work underway intensely in the 1970s [00:20:30] it says spottiness we're back to. That becomes crucial if the regulation governance and that's both internal governance within the industry and external governance on behalf of the public. If it is demanding, insightful and capable, we're okay, but if it's not, we're not. Okay. The systems that you have to have an interesting ability to slip to the lowest common denominator. [00:21:00] By this point, my career, I've worked in 73 different countries. I've lived in 11 different countries, I've seen a company I have a lot of respect for at Shell, operate internationally, some areas, gold standard, Norwegian sector, North Sea, and then I go to work with them in Angola. It's not a very good standard at all and [00:21:30] that's because the regulatory environment with local and national Franco relative to oil and gas is very poor, so the system seems to adopt the lowest sort of common denominator. Can. Strong industry requires strong governance to this man at the end of that experience. Bobby, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Very much pleasure for that integration. Speaker 2: [00:22:00] Mm Mm Speaker 9: [inaudible].Speaker 3: If you are interested in a center for catastrophic risk management, visit their website at cc r m. Dot. berkeley.edu Speaker 10: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link for you. The link is tiny url.com/ [inaudible] spectrum. Now a few science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Speaker 7: Brad swift joints me to present the calendar. Have you ever been interested in learning Mat lab? If so, [00:23:00] this event is for you. Next Wednesday, December 4th math works is sponsoring a technical seminar. Some of the highlights include exploring the fundamentals of the language writing programs to automate your workflow and leveraging tools for efficient program development. This event will take place Wednesday December 4th from nine to 11:00 AM in 100 Lewis Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Make sure to register online@mathworks.com click on [00:23:30] events. Speaker 3: Research on mobile micro robots has been ongoing for the last 20 years, but no micro robots have ever matched the 40 body lengths per second speed of the common ants on our picnic tables and front lawns. Next University of Maryland Speaker 7: Mechanical Engineering Professor Sarah Berg Brighter will discuss the challenges behind micro robotic mobility as well as mechanisms and motors they have designed to enable robot mobility at the insect sized scale. The colloquium is [00:24:00] open to all audiences and will take place on December 4th at 4:00 PM in three Oh six soda hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Every Thursday night, a new adventure unfolds at the California Academy of Sciences. December 5th Cal Academy of Sciences presents its holiday themed. Tis the season nightlife featuring class acts such as slide girls and DJ set by Nathan Blazer of geographer. Whether you're dancing underneath snow flurries in the piazza, or [00:24:30] enjoying the screening of back to the moon for good in the planetarium, this nightlife will be one to remember. Tis the season will take place. Thursday, December 5th from six to 10:00 PM at the California Academy of Sciences located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Remember for this event, you must be 21 years or older, so make sure to bring your ids for alcohol enriched fun. Speaker 7: For more information, go to cal academy.org is the future deterministic [00:25:00] and unalterable or can we shape our future? Marina Corbis suggests the latter. Wednesday, December 12th citrus at UC Berkeley is hosting a talk by executive director of the Institute of the future Marina Corbis. Marina Corpus's research focuses on how social production is changing the face of major industries. In this talk, she will discuss her research along with her insight to our society's future. The talk will take place Wednesday, December 11th [00:25:30] from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM is the target Dye Hall Beneteau Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus and now Brad swift joints. Me for the news. UC Berkeley News Center reports the funding of a new institute to help scholars harness big data, the Berkeley Institute for data science to be housed in the campuses. Central Library building is made possible by grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, which together pledged 37.8 [00:26:00] million over five years to three universities, UC Berkeley, the University of Washington and New York University to foster collaboration in the area of data science. Speaker 7: The goal is to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery with implications for our understanding of the universe, climate and biodiversity research, seismology, neuroscience, human behavior, and many other areas. Saul Perlmutter, UC Berkeley professor of physics [00:26:30] and Nobel laureate will be the director of the campuses. New Institute. David Culler, chair of UC Berkeley is the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science and one of the co-principal investigators. The data science grant said computing is not just a tool. It has become an integral part of the scientific process. Josh Greenberg, who directs the Sloan Foundation's digital information technology program said this joint project will work to create examples [00:27:00] at the three universities that demonstrate how an institution wide commitment to data scientists can deliver dramatic gains in scientific productivity. Speaker 3: NASA's newest Mars bound mission maven blasted off while faculty, students and staff assembled at the space sciences laboratory to watch their handiwork head to the red planet. More than half of the instruments of board the spacecraft were built at UC Berkeley. After a 10 month trip, it will settle into Mars orbit in September, 2014 where it will study the remains [00:27:30] of the Martian atmosphere. Maven was designed to find out why Mars lost its atmosphere and water. Scientists believe that Mars once had an atmosphere, oceans and rivers, very similar to Earth. From its Martian orbit. The spacecraft will collect evidence to support or refute the reigning theory that the loss of its magnetic field allowed solar, wind, and solar storms to scour the atmosphere way of operating any water not frozen under the surface. The answer to this question will give planetary scientists a hint of [00:28:00] what the future may bring for other planets, including earth. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 8: [00:28:30] the music heard during the show was written by Alex Simon. Speaker 1: [00:29:00] Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at the same time. Speaker 9: [00:29:30] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Bea worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Royal Dutch Shell around the world. His research and teaching have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is co-founder of Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UCB.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon and welcome to spectrum. My name is Chase Jakubowski and I'll be the host of today's show. Today we present part two of our two interviews with Robert B professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. [00:01:00] Dr B served as an engineer for the U S Army Corps of Engineers, Shell oil, shell development and Royal Dutch Shell. His work has taken them to more than 60 locations around the world. Has Engineering work, has focused on marine environments, is research and teaching, have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is cofounder of the Center for catastrophic risk management at UC Berkeley in part two. Brett swift asks professor B about the California Delta balancing development and environmental conservation and shoreline retreat. [00:01:30] Is civil engineering misunderstood Speaker 4: or do people simply have a love hate relationship with the built environment? I think a mixture of civil engineering has been changing, so people's preconceived views in many cases are out of date and it's also low of, hey, when the built in art man bite you, it hurts and [00:02:00] hurt, encourages. Hey, there is a big reliance on it though at the same time as well. Yes. Airports, bridges, tunnels, water supply system, sewage supply, large ill NGS. That's our game. We're out of Egypt and Rome. That's where we got our start. And now the new term is infrastructure. Yes. To sort of put all that together into one idea. Yes. [00:02:30] Are there landscapes scale projects out there that people should be aware of and cognizant of? Yeah, that are underway or have recently completed? Yes. One we've been watching carefully is location than the other lunch and it's what's called the water works and the reason we zoom in closely is it's an excellent laboratory test bed for a comparable [00:03:00] problem we face here in California with aren't California Delta infrastructure systems. Speaker 4: Now the Lens, much more comeback, but it deals with an unforgiving test that's the North Sea. And so they've been learning actually over a period of 3000 years. How would it work in a constructive collaborative way with water? We face the same problem here at home. [00:03:30] Often the attention associated with civil engineering projects is due to the tension between environmental degradation and economic gain. Is it possible to have balance when you're doing something on this kind of scale? Answer is yes and it's a term bounce. Nature itself can be extremely destructive to itself. Watch an intense [00:04:00] storm attack, a sensitive reef area in the ocean. The tension and it can be constructive if it's properly managed, is we need to develop these systems, some of which need to make money and at the same time we need to ensure that what is being achieved there is not being degraded, destroyed by unintended consequences [00:04:30] to the environment. Speaker 4: One of the very good things that happened to civil engineering here at Berkeley is we changed our name. We're known as civil and environmental and that's to bring explicit this tension between built works, the natural works, and for God's sakes, remember we have a planet that we've got to live on for a long time. As engineers, we are still [00:05:00] learning how to deal with that tension and particularly when something's on a really large scale, best of intentions going forward, body of knowledge at the time you do the project, how do you know what the environmental impacts are going to be? Those unintended impacts reveal themselves. How do you walk these things back? How do you backtrack from having installed something on a landscape level? That clunky question. [00:05:30] That's one of the reasons for my fascination with the Netherlands, but the way I've worked there for a year, complements of previous employer [inaudible] is Royal Dutch Shell, so I was there learning all the dodge had confronted flooding from the North Sea and essentially the approach was built a big dam wall between you and at [00:06:00] water, you're on the dry site and it's on wet side. They promptly learned that was not good. The in fact heavily polluted areas that they were attempting to occupy and suddenly a new thing started to show in their thinking called give water room so that today they have actually sacrificed areas back to the open ocean [00:06:30] to get water. The room needs to do what it needs today and in the end the entire system has been improved. We've been trying to take some of those hard won lessons back to our California Delta Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 6: You were [00:07:00] listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Brad swift is interviewing Bob Bobby, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talk about the California Delta Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 7: We've talked about the delta a bit. Do you want to expand on the challenges of the Delta and [00:07:30] the downside? Speaker 4: Well, I'll start with the downside. One of the things I used to say in class when I was still teaching here is terror is a fine instructor. Okay. So the downside would be if we had what we call the ultimate catastrophe and it's foreseeable and in fact predictable [00:08:00] in our delta, we would be without an extremely important infrastructure system. For a period of more than five years. That includes fresh supply for small cities like Los Angeles and San Diego and small enterprises like the Central Valley Agricultural Enterprise. So the picture makes Katrina New Orleans look like a place [00:08:30] story. This is big time serious. You'd say hooky bomb. That's a pretty dismal picture. Why? And the answer is back to this risk crepe. The delta infrastructure systems started back in the gold rush days and we want to add some agricultural plans that we built, piles of dirt that I've called disrespectfully [inaudible]. And then we put in transportation [00:09:00] roadways, power supply, electrical power, and then we come up with a bright idea of transporting water from the north side of the delta to the South side of the Gel so we can export orders. Speaker 4: Southern California. Those people need water too. Well, it's all defend it by those same piles or hurt built back in the 1850s it's got art, gas storage under some of those islands and our telecommunications goes through there. [00:09:30] Our railroads go through air, so if you lose critical parts, those piles there, you got big problems. We can foresee it, we can in fact analyze, predict it. We've in fact quantified the risk. They are clearly unacceptable. We've talked to the people who have political insight and power. They are interested to the point of understanding [00:10:00] it and then they turn and ask, well, how do you solve the problem? Well, at this point we say we don't know yet, but we do know it's gonna take a long time to solve perhaps much like the Netherlands, 50 a hundred years. And you can see a Lee blank because there's a two to four year time window. What's this? 50 to a hundred years. Oh, can you tell me about tomorrow's problem? And tomorrow solutions [00:10:30] answer, no, this one's not that. So we've run into her stone wall. Speaker 7: So does it then become something that gets tacked on to all the other things that they want to do with the water? Because there's always a new peripheral canal being proposed. Right? Right. And the north south issue on water's not going away. So for some 50 years solution to happen in California politics, you'd have to have a pretty serious [00:11:00] consensus north and south to the shared interests there. Correct. And there's no dialogue about that really? No. Within the state, no. How about within the civil engineering community? Within the state? No. So everyone wants to ignore the obvious threat to the, so the California economy because basically you're talking about have you applied a cost to the a catastrophic event of the Delta failing? Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we thought that. Or Action Katrina, who Orleans [00:11:30] ultimately has caused the United States in excess of a hundred bill young as ours. Paul that by five or 10 because just the time extent. The population influence though we're talking about hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars. So the economic consequences of doing nothing or horrible and then you'd say, [00:12:00] well, is it possible to fix it? Answer is yes. Well, do you know exactly how? No, we don't. That's going to take time to work through. It also takes key word. You mentioned collaboration. Different interests are involved and we need to learn how to constructively and knowledgeably liberate the signings to say, here's a solution that makes sense to the environmental conscience [00:12:30] in the environment. Here's a sense or a solution makes sense to the social commercial, industrial complex. Hey, we might have a solution here. Let's start experimenting it. We don't have the basis for that lot and consequently it slips back into our busy backgrounds. Much like the San Pedro LPG tanks that are still sitting air. It's in the background and the clock is ticking Speaker 7: and the Dutch model [00:13:00] doesn't help them see how it could evolve. Speaker 4: It doesn't seem to, they sort of have distanced the experience from the Netherlands and saying, well, we could never come to an agreement like that. Of course, as soon as you say that, that's the death coming to an agreement like that. Speaker 7: Well maybe they don't see the impending danger as existential as the Dutch do. Speaker 4: I think that's very true. The Dutch can just walk [00:13:30] outside of their homes. Many of them walk up one of those levees and on the other side they see what's happening. The North Sea is big and mean and ever present and they've got one common enemy, so to speak, and that set ocean and they got to stop the flooding, but yet they can't damage the environment. So they've had to come to grips one with themselves. One more the environment and the long term view. We could do it. We haven't. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 6: [00:14:00] Spectrum is a public affairs show on k a l Ex Brooklyn. Brett swift is with our guests, Professor Robert B of UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talked about Shortline retreat and regulation of oil and gas extraction Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:14:30] with the sea level rise and with storms becoming more volatile and surges from the oceans becoming real factors on shorelines. How should communities and nations approach the idea retreating from the ocean? Speaker 4: Well, again, thankful to our brothers and sisters and Europe. [00:15:00] They're several decades ahead of us in asking and answering exactly that question. They've developed three strategies. They look at existing locations. They then examine each of the three strategies to see which makes longterm sense. The first strategy is fight. A good example would be United Kingdom, the tims flood [00:15:30] barrier. Yeah, you might like to move London, but to not gonna move it very quick easily. And so the answer comes back we need to defend, but you only defend what you can defend, which means you don't try and defend the entire coast of England. You defend small parts of it that can be adequately defended. That's the fight strategy. The next one is flight. I call it get [00:16:00] out of dodge city. And so they say we need to stay age, a strategic withdrawal so that we withdrawal slowly surrendering back to the environment which needs to be surrendered back to the environment and eventually we're gone. The next one is freeze. What the mean is we'll occupy it until it's destroyed and then we're gone. As we looked at the coast, New York, [00:16:30] New Jersey after Sandy, I wish we had done some of that thinking. I hope we do some of that thinking for our California Delta. Speaker 7: I was thinking about civil engineering as it's applied in different parts of the world where a nation state is in a different stage of development. And how do you see civil engineering interacting in those environments differently and taking in risk management and how it's applied? Speaker 4: Well, I guess each society [00:17:00] has to go through its own learning experiences. You can always look at other society and say, oh they weren't very smart or they certainly could have done it this way, rather they did it. So we all into the after the game quarterbacking sort of Mo seems like each of these countries societies has to go through its own learning experience. [00:17:30] As I said earlier, those risk assessment and management businesses one damn thing after another and this learning transfer of insight forward seems to be as frustrating and difficult. Speaker 7: So offshore. Let's Speaker 4: talk about the challenges inherent in that. What do you think about the debate about the risk? How should that debate be framed? [00:18:00] The risks are higher, which means that likelihoods failure that you engineer into the system, it would be much lower, have to have backups in defense and depth and people who actually know they're doing the question is, will we in fact do it before we have a disaster? Don't tell me you think it's safe. Show me and demonstrate to me is that demand has not happened here in the u s yet. [00:18:30] I'm very concerned. For us, I think the government changed some of the permitting process. Is that window dressing? What does it have some real impact on how people behave in the field? It depends on geographically where you're ant Alaska has been very demanding at the Alaskan state level relative to oil and gas operations and when you see a signature [00:19:00] go home or permit, you can pretty well bet that there's sufficient documentation demonstration to justify that signature. Speaker 4: Other parts of the u s are less diligent and so it depends geographically where you're at and what you're dealing. Well, it's not actually reasonable to expect to be able to appropriately regulate, govern and industry [00:19:30] as powerful as the oil and gas industry was spotting governance. Governance needs to be consistent and when the signature goes on to a form that says, yes, I have the ability to immediately abate the source of a blow out. You have the ability the fire engine is built, it's in this station with trained people. Let's ring the bell and see if that fire engine can run. That hasn't happened yet. I [00:20:00] remain personally very concerned for these Oltra high risk operations we're considering in the United States wars. Does the same spottiness occur with fracking in terms of the application of best practices, everything up and able to learn is, yes. Speaker 4: By the way, franking has been underway for many decades. Industry actually hit this kind of work underway intensely in the 1970s [00:20:30] it says spottiness we're back to. That becomes crucial if the regulation governance and that's both internal governance within the industry and external governance on behalf of the public. If it is demanding, insightful and capable, we're okay, but if it's not, we're not. Okay. The systems that you have to have an interesting ability to slip to the lowest common denominator. [00:21:00] By this point, my career, I've worked in 73 different countries. I've lived in 11 different countries, I've seen a company I have a lot of respect for at Shell, operate internationally, some areas, gold standard, Norwegian sector, North Sea, and then I go to work with them in Angola. It's not a very good standard at all and [00:21:30] that's because the regulatory environment with local and national Franco relative to oil and gas is very poor, so the system seems to adopt the lowest sort of common denominator. Can. Strong industry requires strong governance to this man at the end of that experience. Bobby, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Very much pleasure for that integration. Speaker 2: [00:22:00] Mm Mm Speaker 9: [inaudible].Speaker 3: If you are interested in a center for catastrophic risk management, visit their website at cc r m. Dot. berkeley.edu Speaker 10: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link for you. The link is tiny url.com/ [inaudible] spectrum. Now a few science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Speaker 7: Brad swift joints me to present the calendar. Have you ever been interested in learning Mat lab? If so, [00:23:00] this event is for you. Next Wednesday, December 4th math works is sponsoring a technical seminar. Some of the highlights include exploring the fundamentals of the language writing programs to automate your workflow and leveraging tools for efficient program development. This event will take place Wednesday December 4th from nine to 11:00 AM in 100 Lewis Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Make sure to register online@mathworks.com click on [00:23:30] events. Speaker 3: Research on mobile micro robots has been ongoing for the last 20 years, but no micro robots have ever matched the 40 body lengths per second speed of the common ants on our picnic tables and front lawns. Next University of Maryland Speaker 7: Mechanical Engineering Professor Sarah Berg Brighter will discuss the challenges behind micro robotic mobility as well as mechanisms and motors they have designed to enable robot mobility at the insect sized scale. The colloquium is [00:24:00] open to all audiences and will take place on December 4th at 4:00 PM in three Oh six soda hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Every Thursday night, a new adventure unfolds at the California Academy of Sciences. December 5th Cal Academy of Sciences presents its holiday themed. Tis the season nightlife featuring class acts such as slide girls and DJ set by Nathan Blazer of geographer. Whether you're dancing underneath snow flurries in the piazza, or [00:24:30] enjoying the screening of back to the moon for good in the planetarium, this nightlife will be one to remember. Tis the season will take place. Thursday, December 5th from six to 10:00 PM at the California Academy of Sciences located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Remember for this event, you must be 21 years or older, so make sure to bring your ids for alcohol enriched fun. Speaker 7: For more information, go to cal academy.org is the future deterministic [00:25:00] and unalterable or can we shape our future? Marina Corbis suggests the latter. Wednesday, December 12th citrus at UC Berkeley is hosting a talk by executive director of the Institute of the future Marina Corbis. Marina Corpus's research focuses on how social production is changing the face of major industries. In this talk, she will discuss her research along with her insight to our society's future. The talk will take place Wednesday, December 11th [00:25:30] from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM is the target Dye Hall Beneteau Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus and now Brad swift joints. Me for the news. UC Berkeley News Center reports the funding of a new institute to help scholars harness big data, the Berkeley Institute for data science to be housed in the campuses. Central Library building is made possible by grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, which together pledged 37.8 [00:26:00] million over five years to three universities, UC Berkeley, the University of Washington and New York University to foster collaboration in the area of data science. Speaker 7: The goal is to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery with implications for our understanding of the universe, climate and biodiversity research, seismology, neuroscience, human behavior, and many other areas. Saul Perlmutter, UC Berkeley professor of physics [00:26:30] and Nobel laureate will be the director of the campuses. New Institute. David Culler, chair of UC Berkeley is the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science and one of the co-principal investigators. The data science grant said computing is not just a tool. It has become an integral part of the scientific process. Josh Greenberg, who directs the Sloan Foundation's digital information technology program said this joint project will work to create examples [00:27:00] at the three universities that demonstrate how an institution wide commitment to data scientists can deliver dramatic gains in scientific productivity. Speaker 3: NASA's newest Mars bound mission maven blasted off while faculty, students and staff assembled at the space sciences laboratory to watch their handiwork head to the red planet. More than half of the instruments of board the spacecraft were built at UC Berkeley. After a 10 month trip, it will settle into Mars orbit in September, 2014 where it will study the remains [00:27:30] of the Martian atmosphere. Maven was designed to find out why Mars lost its atmosphere and water. Scientists believe that Mars once had an atmosphere, oceans and rivers, very similar to Earth. From its Martian orbit. The spacecraft will collect evidence to support or refute the reigning theory that the loss of its magnetic field allowed solar, wind, and solar storms to scour the atmosphere way of operating any water not frozen under the surface. The answer to this question will give planetary scientists a hint of [00:28:00] what the future may bring for other planets, including earth. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 8: [00:28:30] the music heard during the show was written by Alex Simon. Speaker 1: [00:29:00] Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at the same time. Speaker 9: [00:29:30] [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Bea worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Royal Dutch Shell around the world. His research and teaching have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is co-founder of Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UCB.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay [00:00:30] area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hey there and good afternoon. My name is Renee Rao and I'll be hosting today's show. Today. We present part one of two interviews with Robert B. Professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. Dr B served as an engineer with the U S Army Corps of Engineers, Shell oil, shell development, and Royal Dutch Shell. His work has taken him to more than 60 locations around the [00:01:00] world. His engineering work has focused on marine environments. While his research and teaching have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems, he's a cofounder of the center for catastrophic risk management at UC Berkeley. In part one, safety and risk management are discussed. Speaker 1: Bobby, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Pleasure. You're part of the center for catastrophic risk management. How did that get started and what's the mission? What's the goal? Well, [00:01:30] it started on an airplane coming to California from New Orleans, Louisiana. In November, 2005 on the plate with me was professor Raymond c department, Civil Environmental Engineer. In the early days after Katrina, New Orleans flooding, there were still dragging bodies out, e Eric [00:02:00] and coming, our thinking was, well, why couldn't we help found a group here at Berkeley that would bring together interdisciplinary professionals both in the academic, in Ironman and outside to address catastrophic potential failures, disasters in two frameworks, one after they happen and two before they happen, after [00:02:30] the intent is not blame, shame or hurt, but rather to learn deeply how they happen so that then you can bring it back to prevention mitigation. So we got off the plane, I met with our Dean, Dean Sastry and said, could you tell us how to become a senator here at Berkeley?Speaker 1: I'll never forget it. He got up from his test, walked around to the other side, touch me on the left and right shoulders and said, your center. [00:03:00] That telephone center happened and today the center continues to exist under the leadership of Professor Carlene Roberts and continuing to address a wide variety of accidents that have happened. And once we are working to help not happen. Thank you. Berkeley and the funding is, there is an interesting question. Initially [00:03:30] we thought, well we'll turn to the university for funding. That was not as easy as some of us thought because university was already seriously stretched for funding, just funding itself. So at that point we turned two directions. First Direction principally because of my background was to industry and said, hey and a strength, would you fund research here [00:04:00] and return for your research funding. We'll give you great students with great research backgrounds and research results. Speaker 1: They became excellent funders. We turned to government homeland security for example, or the National Science Foundation. Similar responses. So the funding has come from both industry, commerce and government. Essentially all we had to ask university four [00:04:30] and it's been a precious resource to even ask for it. It has been space and support staff. Are there any of the centers projects that you'd want to talk about? There's I think two. One was a center for catastrophic risk management project at its inception sent bro, PG and e a disaster certainly to the people that were close to land one 32 [00:05:00] that exploded. We followed that disaster from the day it started and carried it all the way through the federal investigations at state investigations and drew from that very, very important lessons, preventative lessons. The other project that has been playing out sort of in sequence with it is in San Pedro, California, the San Pedro, low pressure gas [00:05:30] storage facilities. Speaker 1: It's in a neighborhood and you can see these large gas storage tanks. You can see roads nearby. You can see Walmart in shopping centers and schools and hospitals and homes and you'd say this sounds pretty dangerous. Founded back in the 1950s period. It's pretty old, kind of like Bobby in pre oh and worn out and [00:06:00] it's severed w we call risk creep, which means when they built the tanks and the facilities there, there weren't any people, there was a port to import the gas so forth. But suddenly we've got now densely packed, I'm going to call it political social community infrastructure system, which if you blow out those tanks, we've got big trouble. Houston, well we took on San Pedro in an attempt to help the homeowners that people [00:06:30] actually live there draw or call appropriate attention to the hazard so that they could get appropriate evaluation. Speaker 1: Mid Asian, we haven't been very successful. I think many people say, well, hasn't blown up. It's not gonna blow up. Other people who say, I think I smelled gas and an explosion is not far behind. And then you turn to the state regulation system and say, [00:07:00] well, who's responsible? Answer everybody. Nobody. And at that point it sinks back into the everyday activity of that community and our society. So one horrible experience. We learned a lot of lessons and I'm watching PG and e n r California Public Utilities Commission go through the learning experiences and they're obviously painful. But on the preventative side, art record is looking [00:07:30] pretty dismal. Yeah, that's tough. That's similar to the Chevron fire that was in Richmond and cause you're right, these things get built when they're far away and then developers build right up to them. Same with airports and all sorts of faculty. Speaker 1: Chevron refinery is what our latest investigation and it's got a story behind it because one of the stalwart sponsors at work that's been done by the center for catastrophic [00:08:00] risk management has been Chevron. In fact, they were a member of um, 10 years study that we conducted here concerning how organizations manage very high risk systems successfully. Chevron was one of the successful organizations. So when we saw Richmond go poof, boon, we said something's changed. [00:08:30] They had a sterling record for their operations here. What happened? Well, the story comes that this business of risk assessment management of these complex systems is one damn thing after another. And if you get your attention diverted like, oh, we need to make more money, you start diverting precious human resources working to achieve, say that he them [00:09:00] safety starts to degrade and at that point roasty Pintful only stay rusty so long at that point, poof, boom. Speaker 3: You're listening to spectrum on k a Alex Berkeley. Brad swift is interviewing Bob, be a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talk about collaboration. Speaker 4: [00:09:30] Talk about some of the people you've collaborated with and the benefits that flow from Speaker 1: that kind of work. That's been one of the real blessings of my life has been collaboration. One of the things that dealing with complex problems and systems and most afraid of is myself. I'm afraid of myself because I know I'll think about something [00:10:00] in a single boy and I'll think about it from the knowledge I have and then all develop a solution or insight to how something happens. Given that set of intellectual tools and so learned to be afraid of myself and I get very comfortable is when I have people who don't think like me, who will in fact listen to me and then respectfully when I finished they say, [00:10:30] Oh, you're wrong. Here's why. And then of course out rock back and I say, okay, he explains more or less, let's get there. And what I have found in evitable Lee is I end up at a different point than where I started, which tells me the power of collaboration can be extremely strong as long as collaboration is knowledgeable and respectful. If it gets to be ignorance at work and it's disrespectful, you can expect Bob [00:11:00] to become pretty nasty. [inaudible]. Speaker 4: In reflection on your activities in civil engineering and in academia, does civil engineering need to change in some way or is there a subtle change happening that you recognize? Speaker 1: I think there's subtle change having and proud. I think I see it starting to sprout here at Berkeley. The change that's happening is that you struck on with your earlier question concerning collaboration. [00:11:30] So it turns out to be the power of civil engineering collaboration. We've actually got people in engineering working with people in political science, public health business. That is an extremely encouraging sign. As long as we can keep that collaboration going in the right directions. If you do that, do it well. Then this symphony of disasters and accidents, we'll hear that [00:12:00] music go down a lot. You sort of made famous, the civil engineering course one 80 and you're not teaching that anymore, right? That's correct. Did you pass it on to someone you know and give them the blessing? I tried to, yeah. C e one e engineering systems is what it was called, I think was teachable for me because of the experiences. Speaker 1: [00:12:30] I came here after 35 years, 36 years of industry work, and I've been working as laborers since I was 14 went to work as a roofer roofing crew in Florida. I'm not too smart, and so I was able to bring that background experience into the classroom and virtually turned the students loose, said we don't want you to do is first formed into teams. Well a year [00:13:00] at Berkeley, we tend to be what I call a star system student is independent. They gotta be the best in the class working together as something not encouraged. Well, I would say to hell with the star system, we're going to work as a team. So teamwork came in and that's because that hit very strong training through the Harvard Executive Master of Business Administration Program on teamwork and organization and that kind of stuff. So I brought that in and then said, well you have all this [00:13:30] technical stuff. Speaker 1: Get out of Berkeley, go out there and meet the real people, meet some real experts outside of the Berkeley experts and go solve problems. So essentially I turned them loose, but I kept him from hurting themselves. It worked beautifully. Well notice you can't then turn back to normal Berkeley faculty and say, teach it. It's not reasonable because he's not had that [00:14:00] experience. You could think about team teaching, but then you'd say, well ob, we have trouble with enough funding to teach with one person in a class, much less teen teaching. So I sort of agreed with myself to hope somebody remembers and when the university has more resources they could in fact return to these times of real life experience classes. The students that came [00:14:30] through that sort of experiences have made some remarkable contributions already. Good kids. Has anyone approached you about doing any of this online teaching? Speaker 1: Yes, and I steadily said no. The reason is a saying that I was given by a very dear friend and a collaborator, University of Washington, Seattle said a bomb. [00:15:00] Engineers want to believe the planet is not inhabited. We don't like people were antisocial. Go to a party and you can tell it immediately you were in a corner, you know, talking boring shop. Well let, don't want to contribute to e offline internet generation of engineers who do let her work with each other. I have all the liberating intellectual things in the classroom outside of the classroom. So [00:15:30] [inaudible] been very supportive. We need more human contact. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: spectrum is a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley. Our guest is professor Bob B of UC Berkeley. In the next segment they speak about safety. Speaker 2: Aw. Speaker 1: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to talk about? One of the things [00:16:00] that as I leave my career period in my career at Berkeley that makes me sad for Berkeley really got my attention during the Macondo disaster. Many good friends that I still have at DPE that were in fact involved in the causation of the accident kept saying, well, what we did we thought was safe. The thing that makes me say [00:16:30] is we still have a course to teach engineers what the word means and how to quantify it so that then people can look at it and say, this is acceptable. Those people could be from the school football or public hill. This kind of risk management not happening here. That's I had, and I can look forward. I think all of us can two continuing problems in this area because of a lack of appropriate [00:17:00] education. The engineering thinking in many cases is w explicit thinking about uncertainties, variability and is devoid of thinking intensely about the potential effects. Uh, human malfunctions. The engineer goes through a career of saying the weld will be done according to specifications. There's where it pumps up. [00:17:30] The engineers. Education is one a deals with an imaginary world. There is no significant uncertainty. You sorta by code specification or however inspection do away with that and things will be perfectly [inaudible]. Guess what? It's not the human factor, the human factor. Speaker 4: Given that there's always going to be that human factor [00:18:00] at risk management seems to be a quandary of the open-endedness of it. When do you feel you've done enough of it? When do you feel confident that you're ready to say, yes, I'm prepared for all circumstances? No one can know all things yet at the same time, you do as much as you can or what can you afford? Right. It comes down to the money side of it again. Yeah. I Speaker 1: love your question. I got on this while I was here, so I didn't come in here knowing this [00:18:30] one, when I came in to this risk assessment, management got into the depths of it. I had to do a lot of reading and reading. I was doing coming from many different industries and parts of the world said, oh well risk assessment and even a proactive think before predict cause like you were saying. But the falling that is, you can't predict everything, but they never said it. Okay. And the next thing you said was it's reactive [00:19:00] so that when something bad happens, you reflect on it, learn from it, and you manage the consequences. Well, I'm sitting here and by the way, I came here without a phd, but I got one, all of them white. I introduced interactive management and I'm sitting at home trying to think how to do something for a PhD dissertation that's new. Speaker 1: And I said, oh, there's proactive and there's reactive that gotta be interactive. How in the hell can I learn about this? And I end up working [00:19:30] with two pediatric emergency room management teams, a BB team, I call them [inaudible] into hospital Los Angeles, the other San Francisco general mortality rate, same number of beds in air emergency room wards was a factor of 10 higher in San Francisco. So we went and observed them, students with me, and we started interactive management. The baby can't tell you what's wrong with it [00:20:00] and yet the medical team has to be able to diagnose it, invoke corrective action to save the life and the success shows up in mortality. So we got deep into that and that entered interacted management. Hey, story goes on. We're working with commercial aviation, U S air, United Airlines and southwest airlines. U Us air comes to a confidential meeting and says, [00:20:30] well, we found out where we had five fatal accidents five years in a row. Speaker 1: We had given our flight crews instructions. They were to leave the gate on time without exception. Well, the five that had crashes did the checkout on the taxi out. Two of them found that they didn't have enough fuel to make the next airport unless they have tail. Winston. Of course they had headwinds. Well then experience in his interactive [00:21:00] management. The guy shows up at our doorstep here in Maine, sully Sullenberger and he's learning about what we have been learning. He's heard through u s air about this interactive management. Boy Did we carry him through it and boy did. He carry us through perfect example of how you can prepare a very complex hazardous system to succeed [00:21:30] in the face of failure. What they did that morning and he sent me an email that morning before they took off from the Guardian when they took all laws, both engines totally not predictable, did the scan or the alternative airports and what would happen if they didn't have enough flight path to make it turn toward the Hudson and pulled off. That was totally prepared for including design of back water back flow valves through the air intakes into [00:22:00] the Airbus. He knew what he was doing. Look at the flight inclination of the plane coming into the river. Looks like barefoot skiers toes up. Speaker 1: There's the power of the thinking so you do end up measuring safety just to, you said you never sure you got the spit on it or right. Something could happen out of the blue. Somebody walks across the street that's not supposed to. You then have to have the ability to get through [00:22:30] the system quickly and have the correct response. That's part of risk assessment management. Unfortunately, BP never learned it before the conduct so that when it really hit hard, it hit hard. That night they couldn't respond. They froze and they killed 11 people at White. Yeah, I read the report that you did on that and I was like potboiler. [00:23:00] It's really riveting stuff. Yup. Speaker 1: That's an amazing tale. Yeah, it makes me so overwhelming. Go sailing. You say all in the bay, Yo God, you know? Yeah. I'd taken the boat to Mexico taking the channel islands twice. I'm single handed sailor. Oh really? I've lost my ass once. Those exciting tale about [00:23:30] disaster preparation, I guess sailing alone is a good sort of a risk management hands on practice reason. You'd say, come on Bob, you got it. He's somewhat here, man. I've learned. When I say go, I can only sale, which means I can't think about Katrina or beat pea or San Bruno. I've got to focus totally on that boat and sailing. If not, I ask here quick. So it's a relief and that's why you do the [00:24:00] solo rather than have other people on board. Then you get sloppy, sloppy, and et cetera. Yeah, and so most of my sailing is done solo. Speaker 6: No [inaudible]. Speaker 3: If you're interested in the center for catastrophic risk management and it's riveting reports, visit the website, c c r n. Dot berkeley.edu [00:24:30] to listen to any and every past episode of spectrum for free. Visit our archive on iTunes university. The link is tiny url.com/calyx spectrum. Now two of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Cheese, Yucca boss and I presented a calendar Speaker 7: this Tuesday, November 19th the SF ask a scientist's lecture series. [00:25:00] We'll present a talk by a neuroscientist, Adam Gazzaley and magician Robert Strong from ancient conjures to big ticket Las Vegas. Illusionists. Magicians have been expertly manipulating human attention and perception to dazzle and delight us. The team will demonstrate how magicians use our brains as their accomplices in effecting the impossible and explain what scientists can learn about the brain by studying the methods and techniques of magic. The event will take place on Tuesday, November 19th at 7:00 PM in Stanford's geology corner. Auditorium Room [00:25:30] Number One oh five and building number three 20 of Stanford's main quad. Speaker 3: This Wednesday, November 20th the UC Berkeley Archeological Research Facility will host a seminar on indigenous food ways and landscape management. Since 2007 a multidisciplinary research team has been working to implement an Eto archeological approach to explore indigenous landscape management on the central coast of California. This presentation includes results of a study associated with UC Berkeley Graduate Student Rob Casseroles, [00:26:00] dissertation research, which takes a historical ecological approach to integrating major sources of data, including fiery ecology of contemporary landscapes and results of macro botanical analysis of indigenous settlements. The event is open to all audiences and will be held on November 20th from 12 to 1:00 PM in room one oh one of the archaeological research facility on the UC Berkeley campus and now Chase Jakubowski with our new story. Speaker 7: This story is from the UC Berkeley new center. [00:26:30] CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats for nearly two decades after Japanese researchers first discovered CRISPR in bacteria in 1987 scientists dismissed it as junk DNA, far from being junk. CRISPR was actually a way of storing the genetic information of an invading virus in the form of Palindromic DNA sequence. The bacteria used this genetic information to target the viral invader by chopping [00:27:00] it up with powerful CRISPR associated enzymes capable of cleaving its DNA molecule, just like a pair of molecular scissors. The mystery of CRISPR was resolved by Jennifer Doudna of the University of California Berkeley, a specialist in RNA about seven years ago. Downer was asked by a university colleague to look into this genetic particularity of bacteria and quickly became fascinated. The more we looked into it, the more it seemed extremely interesting. Professor Doudna [00:27:30] said then in 2011 she met Emmanuelle Carpentier of Ooma University in Sweden at a scientific conference. Speaker 7: Professor Carpentier told professor down a of another kind of CRISPR system that seemed to rely on a single gene called c a s nine both professors collaborated on the project and an August last year published what is now considered the seminal paper showing that cas nine was an enzyme capable of cutting both [00:28:00] strands of DNA double helix at precisely the point dictated by a programmable RNA sequence. In other words, an RNA molecule that could be made to order. It has worked beautifully on plants and animals. Professors Doudna and sharpen ta had found the holy grail of genetic engineering, a method of cutting and stitching DNA accurately and simply anywhere in a complex genome. I'm tremendously excited about the possibility of this discovery having a real impact on people's [00:28:30] lives. Maybe we'll offer the opportunity to do therapeutics that we've not been able to do in the past. Professor Doudna said her team is already working on possible ways of using the cas nine system to disrupt the damaging chromosomes responsible for down syndrome or the extra repetitive sequences of DNA that lead to Huntington's disease. What's exciting is that you can see the potential and it's certainly going to drive a lot of research to try to explore it as a potential human therapeutic tool. Speaker 3: [00:29:00] Mm. Don't forget to tune in next week to your part two professor B's interview. He and Brad Swift will discuss the California Delta and shoreline retreat. Okay. The music heard during this show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. [00:29:30] Our email address is spectrum KALX. Hey, yahoo.com join us in two weeks. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Bea worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Royal Dutch Shell around the world. His research and teaching have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is co-founder of Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UCB.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay [00:00:30] area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hey there and good afternoon. My name is Renee Rao and I'll be hosting today's show. Today. We present part one of two interviews with Robert B. Professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. Dr B served as an engineer with the U S Army Corps of Engineers, Shell oil, shell development, and Royal Dutch Shell. His work has taken him to more than 60 locations around the [00:01:00] world. His engineering work has focused on marine environments. While his research and teaching have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems, he's a cofounder of the center for catastrophic risk management at UC Berkeley. In part one, safety and risk management are discussed. Speaker 1: Bobby, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Pleasure. You're part of the center for catastrophic risk management. How did that get started and what's the mission? What's the goal? Well, [00:01:30] it started on an airplane coming to California from New Orleans, Louisiana. In November, 2005 on the plate with me was professor Raymond c department, Civil Environmental Engineer. In the early days after Katrina, New Orleans flooding, there were still dragging bodies out, e Eric [00:02:00] and coming, our thinking was, well, why couldn't we help found a group here at Berkeley that would bring together interdisciplinary professionals both in the academic, in Ironman and outside to address catastrophic potential failures, disasters in two frameworks, one after they happen and two before they happen, after [00:02:30] the intent is not blame, shame or hurt, but rather to learn deeply how they happen so that then you can bring it back to prevention mitigation. So we got off the plane, I met with our Dean, Dean Sastry and said, could you tell us how to become a senator here at Berkeley?Speaker 1: I'll never forget it. He got up from his test, walked around to the other side, touch me on the left and right shoulders and said, your center. [00:03:00] That telephone center happened and today the center continues to exist under the leadership of Professor Carlene Roberts and continuing to address a wide variety of accidents that have happened. And once we are working to help not happen. Thank you. Berkeley and the funding is, there is an interesting question. Initially [00:03:30] we thought, well we'll turn to the university for funding. That was not as easy as some of us thought because university was already seriously stretched for funding, just funding itself. So at that point we turned two directions. First Direction principally because of my background was to industry and said, hey and a strength, would you fund research here [00:04:00] and return for your research funding. We'll give you great students with great research backgrounds and research results. Speaker 1: They became excellent funders. We turned to government homeland security for example, or the National Science Foundation. Similar responses. So the funding has come from both industry, commerce and government. Essentially all we had to ask university four [00:04:30] and it's been a precious resource to even ask for it. It has been space and support staff. Are there any of the centers projects that you'd want to talk about? There's I think two. One was a center for catastrophic risk management project at its inception sent bro, PG and e a disaster certainly to the people that were close to land one 32 [00:05:00] that exploded. We followed that disaster from the day it started and carried it all the way through the federal investigations at state investigations and drew from that very, very important lessons, preventative lessons. The other project that has been playing out sort of in sequence with it is in San Pedro, California, the San Pedro, low pressure gas [00:05:30] storage facilities. Speaker 1: It's in a neighborhood and you can see these large gas storage tanks. You can see roads nearby. You can see Walmart in shopping centers and schools and hospitals and homes and you'd say this sounds pretty dangerous. Founded back in the 1950s period. It's pretty old, kind of like Bobby in pre oh and worn out and [00:06:00] it's severed w we call risk creep, which means when they built the tanks and the facilities there, there weren't any people, there was a port to import the gas so forth. But suddenly we've got now densely packed, I'm going to call it political social community infrastructure system, which if you blow out those tanks, we've got big trouble. Houston, well we took on San Pedro in an attempt to help the homeowners that people [00:06:30] actually live there draw or call appropriate attention to the hazard so that they could get appropriate evaluation. Speaker 1: Mid Asian, we haven't been very successful. I think many people say, well, hasn't blown up. It's not gonna blow up. Other people who say, I think I smelled gas and an explosion is not far behind. And then you turn to the state regulation system and say, [00:07:00] well, who's responsible? Answer everybody. Nobody. And at that point it sinks back into the everyday activity of that community and our society. So one horrible experience. We learned a lot of lessons and I'm watching PG and e n r California Public Utilities Commission go through the learning experiences and they're obviously painful. But on the preventative side, art record is looking [00:07:30] pretty dismal. Yeah, that's tough. That's similar to the Chevron fire that was in Richmond and cause you're right, these things get built when they're far away and then developers build right up to them. Same with airports and all sorts of faculty. Speaker 1: Chevron refinery is what our latest investigation and it's got a story behind it because one of the stalwart sponsors at work that's been done by the center for catastrophic [00:08:00] risk management has been Chevron. In fact, they were a member of um, 10 years study that we conducted here concerning how organizations manage very high risk systems successfully. Chevron was one of the successful organizations. So when we saw Richmond go poof, boon, we said something's changed. [00:08:30] They had a sterling record for their operations here. What happened? Well, the story comes that this business of risk assessment management of these complex systems is one damn thing after another. And if you get your attention diverted like, oh, we need to make more money, you start diverting precious human resources working to achieve, say that he them [00:09:00] safety starts to degrade and at that point roasty Pintful only stay rusty so long at that point, poof, boom. Speaker 3: You're listening to spectrum on k a Alex Berkeley. Brad swift is interviewing Bob, be a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talk about collaboration. Speaker 4: [00:09:30] Talk about some of the people you've collaborated with and the benefits that flow from Speaker 1: that kind of work. That's been one of the real blessings of my life has been collaboration. One of the things that dealing with complex problems and systems and most afraid of is myself. I'm afraid of myself because I know I'll think about something [00:10:00] in a single boy and I'll think about it from the knowledge I have and then all develop a solution or insight to how something happens. Given that set of intellectual tools and so learned to be afraid of myself and I get very comfortable is when I have people who don't think like me, who will in fact listen to me and then respectfully when I finished they say, [00:10:30] Oh, you're wrong. Here's why. And then of course out rock back and I say, okay, he explains more or less, let's get there. And what I have found in evitable Lee is I end up at a different point than where I started, which tells me the power of collaboration can be extremely strong as long as collaboration is knowledgeable and respectful. If it gets to be ignorance at work and it's disrespectful, you can expect Bob [00:11:00] to become pretty nasty. [inaudible]. Speaker 4: In reflection on your activities in civil engineering and in academia, does civil engineering need to change in some way or is there a subtle change happening that you recognize? Speaker 1: I think there's subtle change having and proud. I think I see it starting to sprout here at Berkeley. The change that's happening is that you struck on with your earlier question concerning collaboration. [00:11:30] So it turns out to be the power of civil engineering collaboration. We've actually got people in engineering working with people in political science, public health business. That is an extremely encouraging sign. As long as we can keep that collaboration going in the right directions. If you do that, do it well. Then this symphony of disasters and accidents, we'll hear that [00:12:00] music go down a lot. You sort of made famous, the civil engineering course one 80 and you're not teaching that anymore, right? That's correct. Did you pass it on to someone you know and give them the blessing? I tried to, yeah. C e one e engineering systems is what it was called, I think was teachable for me because of the experiences. Speaker 1: [00:12:30] I came here after 35 years, 36 years of industry work, and I've been working as laborers since I was 14 went to work as a roofer roofing crew in Florida. I'm not too smart, and so I was able to bring that background experience into the classroom and virtually turned the students loose, said we don't want you to do is first formed into teams. Well a year [00:13:00] at Berkeley, we tend to be what I call a star system student is independent. They gotta be the best in the class working together as something not encouraged. Well, I would say to hell with the star system, we're going to work as a team. So teamwork came in and that's because that hit very strong training through the Harvard Executive Master of Business Administration Program on teamwork and organization and that kind of stuff. So I brought that in and then said, well you have all this [00:13:30] technical stuff. Speaker 1: Get out of Berkeley, go out there and meet the real people, meet some real experts outside of the Berkeley experts and go solve problems. So essentially I turned them loose, but I kept him from hurting themselves. It worked beautifully. Well notice you can't then turn back to normal Berkeley faculty and say, teach it. It's not reasonable because he's not had that [00:14:00] experience. You could think about team teaching, but then you'd say, well ob, we have trouble with enough funding to teach with one person in a class, much less teen teaching. So I sort of agreed with myself to hope somebody remembers and when the university has more resources they could in fact return to these times of real life experience classes. The students that came [00:14:30] through that sort of experiences have made some remarkable contributions already. Good kids. Has anyone approached you about doing any of this online teaching? Speaker 1: Yes, and I steadily said no. The reason is a saying that I was given by a very dear friend and a collaborator, University of Washington, Seattle said a bomb. [00:15:00] Engineers want to believe the planet is not inhabited. We don't like people were antisocial. Go to a party and you can tell it immediately you were in a corner, you know, talking boring shop. Well let, don't want to contribute to e offline internet generation of engineers who do let her work with each other. I have all the liberating intellectual things in the classroom outside of the classroom. So [00:15:30] [inaudible] been very supportive. We need more human contact. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: spectrum is a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley. Our guest is professor Bob B of UC Berkeley. In the next segment they speak about safety. Speaker 2: Aw. Speaker 1: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to talk about? One of the things [00:16:00] that as I leave my career period in my career at Berkeley that makes me sad for Berkeley really got my attention during the Macondo disaster. Many good friends that I still have at DPE that were in fact involved in the causation of the accident kept saying, well, what we did we thought was safe. The thing that makes me say [00:16:30] is we still have a course to teach engineers what the word means and how to quantify it so that then people can look at it and say, this is acceptable. Those people could be from the school football or public hill. This kind of risk management not happening here. That's I had, and I can look forward. I think all of us can two continuing problems in this area because of a lack of appropriate [00:17:00] education. The engineering thinking in many cases is w explicit thinking about uncertainties, variability and is devoid of thinking intensely about the potential effects. Uh, human malfunctions. The engineer goes through a career of saying the weld will be done according to specifications. There's where it pumps up. [00:17:30] The engineers. Education is one a deals with an imaginary world. There is no significant uncertainty. You sorta by code specification or however inspection do away with that and things will be perfectly [inaudible]. Guess what? It's not the human factor, the human factor. Speaker 4: Given that there's always going to be that human factor [00:18:00] at risk management seems to be a quandary of the open-endedness of it. When do you feel you've done enough of it? When do you feel confident that you're ready to say, yes, I'm prepared for all circumstances? No one can know all things yet at the same time, you do as much as you can or what can you afford? Right. It comes down to the money side of it again. Yeah. I Speaker 1: love your question. I got on this while I was here, so I didn't come in here knowing this [00:18:30] one, when I came in to this risk assessment, management got into the depths of it. I had to do a lot of reading and reading. I was doing coming from many different industries and parts of the world said, oh well risk assessment and even a proactive think before predict cause like you were saying. But the falling that is, you can't predict everything, but they never said it. Okay. And the next thing you said was it's reactive [00:19:00] so that when something bad happens, you reflect on it, learn from it, and you manage the consequences. Well, I'm sitting here and by the way, I came here without a phd, but I got one, all of them white. I introduced interactive management and I'm sitting at home trying to think how to do something for a PhD dissertation that's new. Speaker 1: And I said, oh, there's proactive and there's reactive that gotta be interactive. How in the hell can I learn about this? And I end up working [00:19:30] with two pediatric emergency room management teams, a BB team, I call them [inaudible] into hospital Los Angeles, the other San Francisco general mortality rate, same number of beds in air emergency room wards was a factor of 10 higher in San Francisco. So we went and observed them, students with me, and we started interactive management. The baby can't tell you what's wrong with it [00:20:00] and yet the medical team has to be able to diagnose it, invoke corrective action to save the life and the success shows up in mortality. So we got deep into that and that entered interacted management. Hey, story goes on. We're working with commercial aviation, U S air, United Airlines and southwest airlines. U Us air comes to a confidential meeting and says, [00:20:30] well, we found out where we had five fatal accidents five years in a row. Speaker 1: We had given our flight crews instructions. They were to leave the gate on time without exception. Well, the five that had crashes did the checkout on the taxi out. Two of them found that they didn't have enough fuel to make the next airport unless they have tail. Winston. Of course they had headwinds. Well then experience in his interactive [00:21:00] management. The guy shows up at our doorstep here in Maine, sully Sullenberger and he's learning about what we have been learning. He's heard through u s air about this interactive management. Boy Did we carry him through it and boy did. He carry us through perfect example of how you can prepare a very complex hazardous system to succeed [00:21:30] in the face of failure. What they did that morning and he sent me an email that morning before they took off from the Guardian when they took all laws, both engines totally not predictable, did the scan or the alternative airports and what would happen if they didn't have enough flight path to make it turn toward the Hudson and pulled off. That was totally prepared for including design of back water back flow valves through the air intakes into [00:22:00] the Airbus. He knew what he was doing. Look at the flight inclination of the plane coming into the river. Looks like barefoot skiers toes up. Speaker 1: There's the power of the thinking so you do end up measuring safety just to, you said you never sure you got the spit on it or right. Something could happen out of the blue. Somebody walks across the street that's not supposed to. You then have to have the ability to get through [00:22:30] the system quickly and have the correct response. That's part of risk assessment management. Unfortunately, BP never learned it before the conduct so that when it really hit hard, it hit hard. That night they couldn't respond. They froze and they killed 11 people at White. Yeah, I read the report that you did on that and I was like potboiler. [00:23:00] It's really riveting stuff. Yup. Speaker 1: That's an amazing tale. Yeah, it makes me so overwhelming. Go sailing. You say all in the bay, Yo God, you know? Yeah. I'd taken the boat to Mexico taking the channel islands twice. I'm single handed sailor. Oh really? I've lost my ass once. Those exciting tale about [00:23:30] disaster preparation, I guess sailing alone is a good sort of a risk management hands on practice reason. You'd say, come on Bob, you got it. He's somewhat here, man. I've learned. When I say go, I can only sale, which means I can't think about Katrina or beat pea or San Bruno. I've got to focus totally on that boat and sailing. If not, I ask here quick. So it's a relief and that's why you do the [00:24:00] solo rather than have other people on board. Then you get sloppy, sloppy, and et cetera. Yeah, and so most of my sailing is done solo. Speaker 6: No [inaudible]. Speaker 3: If you're interested in the center for catastrophic risk management and it's riveting reports, visit the website, c c r n. Dot berkeley.edu [00:24:30] to listen to any and every past episode of spectrum for free. Visit our archive on iTunes university. The link is tiny url.com/calyx spectrum. Now two of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Cheese, Yucca boss and I presented a calendar Speaker 7: this Tuesday, November 19th the SF ask a scientist's lecture series. [00:25:00] We'll present a talk by a neuroscientist, Adam Gazzaley and magician Robert Strong from ancient conjures to big ticket Las Vegas. Illusionists. Magicians have been expertly manipulating human attention and perception to dazzle and delight us. The team will demonstrate how magicians use our brains as their accomplices in effecting the impossible and explain what scientists can learn about the brain by studying the methods and techniques of magic. The event will take place on Tuesday, November 19th at 7:00 PM in Stanford's geology corner. Auditorium Room [00:25:30] Number One oh five and building number three 20 of Stanford's main quad. Speaker 3: This Wednesday, November 20th the UC Berkeley Archeological Research Facility will host a seminar on indigenous food ways and landscape management. Since 2007 a multidisciplinary research team has been working to implement an Eto archeological approach to explore indigenous landscape management on the central coast of California. This presentation includes results of a study associated with UC Berkeley Graduate Student Rob Casseroles, [00:26:00] dissertation research, which takes a historical ecological approach to integrating major sources of data, including fiery ecology of contemporary landscapes and results of macro botanical analysis of indigenous settlements. The event is open to all audiences and will be held on November 20th from 12 to 1:00 PM in room one oh one of the archaeological research facility on the UC Berkeley campus and now Chase Jakubowski with our new story. Speaker 7: This story is from the UC Berkeley new center. [00:26:30] CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats for nearly two decades after Japanese researchers first discovered CRISPR in bacteria in 1987 scientists dismissed it as junk DNA, far from being junk. CRISPR was actually a way of storing the genetic information of an invading virus in the form of Palindromic DNA sequence. The bacteria used this genetic information to target the viral invader by chopping [00:27:00] it up with powerful CRISPR associated enzymes capable of cleaving its DNA molecule, just like a pair of molecular scissors. The mystery of CRISPR was resolved by Jennifer Doudna of the University of California Berkeley, a specialist in RNA about seven years ago. Downer was asked by a university colleague to look into this genetic particularity of bacteria and quickly became fascinated. The more we looked into it, the more it seemed extremely interesting. Professor Doudna [00:27:30] said then in 2011 she met Emmanuelle Carpentier of Ooma University in Sweden at a scientific conference. Speaker 7: Professor Carpentier told professor down a of another kind of CRISPR system that seemed to rely on a single gene called c a s nine both professors collaborated on the project and an August last year published what is now considered the seminal paper showing that cas nine was an enzyme capable of cutting both [00:28:00] strands of DNA double helix at precisely the point dictated by a programmable RNA sequence. In other words, an RNA molecule that could be made to order. It has worked beautifully on plants and animals. Professors Doudna and sharpen ta had found the holy grail of genetic engineering, a method of cutting and stitching DNA accurately and simply anywhere in a complex genome. I'm tremendously excited about the possibility of this discovery having a real impact on people's [00:28:30] lives. Maybe we'll offer the opportunity to do therapeutics that we've not been able to do in the past. Professor Doudna said her team is already working on possible ways of using the cas nine system to disrupt the damaging chromosomes responsible for down syndrome or the extra repetitive sequences of DNA that lead to Huntington's disease. What's exciting is that you can see the potential and it's certainly going to drive a lot of research to try to explore it as a potential human therapeutic tool. Speaker 3: [00:29:00] Mm. Don't forget to tune in next week to your part two professor B's interview. He and Brad Swift will discuss the California Delta and shoreline retreat. Okay. The music heard during this show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. [00:29:30] Our email address is spectrum KALX. Hey, yahoo.com join us in two weeks. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.