Too Many Warnings?

At 5:35 P.M. on September 17, 2018, the University of Maryland Police Department (UMPD) sent a tornado warning by email and text message to university students, faculty, and staff: "A Tornado Warning has been issued for the UMD campus. The sirens will be activated. Seek shelter immediately, avoid windows."  This message did not mention that the warning was issued by Accuweather.  The National Weather Service (NWS) did not issue a tornado warning.  At 6:04 P.M., the UMPD sent the following message: "The Tornado Warning that was issued by AccuWeather is now cancelled as of 6:00 PM."

Part of Accuweather's business is generating severe weather alerts for its clients. Its website touts the benefits of Accuweather's warnings and its "null tornado notifications" that a NWS tornado warning will not affect a client's facility.  The website discusses the benefits of knowing that a tornado warning is not a direct threat, so a shutdown is not necessary, and claims that Accuweather's false alarm rate is lower than the NWS false alarm rate (10% to 80%).

When one organization issues a warning while the other does not, the inconsistency could decrease trust in warnings, increasing the likelihood of ignoring warnings.
An article in The Washington Post about the false alarm (Angela Fritz and Sarah Larimer, "Red flags at U-Md. over false alarm for tornado," September 19, 2018) quoted Gary Szatkowki, a former NWS meteorologist, who asked "What do we want to do about a weather organization issuing a tornado warning when the Weather Service does not?"

Although the University of Maryland is a large institution (approximately 40,000 students), its cost of a false alarm is smaller than the same cost for a factory (where a shutdown directly impacts throughput and revenue).  Moreover, many students and others are outdoors, and the university has a strong desire to be viewed as a safe place, so the potential impact is large.

In that case, the university should be willing to tolerate more warnings.  Too many warnings?  No, in this case.

Improving Decision-Making Processes

The WomenCorporateDirectors Foundation’s Thought Leadership Commission and the KPMG Board Leadership Center issued a report that describes some of the problems that can cause poor decision making and recommends improving decision-making processes.  The report discusses incomplete information, groupthink, overconfidence, and other poor practices as causes of decision-making failures. 

The report presents five decision-making styles (first presented in an article by Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony):

• Visionary,
• Guardian,
• Motivator,
• Flexible, and
• Catalyst.

Each style has its strengths and weaknesses.  I would add that a decision-maker needs to use the right decision-making style for the decision-context that is present (see more about this at this blog post). 

The report also discusses ways to create a more inquisitive, risk-based decision-making process by considering multiple viewpoints, identifying the pros and cons of every alternative, and discussing the associated risks (what could go wrong).  The resulting process will resemble the "discovery decision-making process" described by Paul Nutt.

Finally, the report recommends evaluating the decision-making process, not its outcomes, as a way to identify opportunities for improvement.

HT: ISE Magazine

Scientists describe. Engineers decide.

The May, 2018, issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine included the article "Without Engineering, Civilization Does Not Exist" by Adrian Bejan.  I wrote the following letter about this article; my letter appeared in the July 2018 issue.

To the Editor:

I wholeheartedly concur with Adrian Bejan's conclusion that engineering has transformed our society for the better.  Unfortunately, Professor Bejan's definition of engineering as type of science was inaccurate, which contributes to the public's misunderstanding of our profession.

The article stated that "engineering is a science of what is useful" and "engineering is [a] body of science."  It concluded by repeating that engineering is "the science of useful things."

Although engineers need to learn science and some scientists do some engineering, engineering is not a type of science, for it has a different objective.  Scientists study the world in order to understand it, but engineers design new products and systems.  Scientists describe; engineers decide.  Henry Petroski discussed this distinction and provided more ways to view it in An Engineer's Alphabet.  Professor Bejan was closer to the truth when he described engineers as those who "are developing new contrivances and improving old ones."

Jeffrey W. Herrmann