1st KISTEP Future Forum (Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning) — brief notes
1. Social issues: climate and environmental change, water, food, terror wars, resource/energy, infectious diseases, population growth and social inequality, rapid urbanization (0.4% of land surface vs. 80% of warming), new drug development (bioethanol vs. the impact on corn-exporting nations), cyber terror, disasters in neighboring countries (China's radiation accident).
The need for disaster management
1) Roh Moo-hyun (logistics chaos) → building a Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) system for the nation.
— Interdependence between ministries of national institutions is critical.
— USA: research portfolios like SNL (system dynamics — avian flu simulation) are needed.
2) Unimaginable disasters < "We could have imagined them."
— Yeosu blackout: a cascading case of Murphy's law.
3) Nuclear power — we say it's safe even at the smallest warning sign, but perfection does not exist.
4) Alternatives are needed for technological disasters (with prior controls via technology impact assessment) as much as for social disasters.
— Even researchers over-focus on their own field.
— (Earthquakes require seismic data) (Nuclear specialists focus on their own statistics) → neutral discussion material is needed.
2. Risk society: the emergence of risks we cannot control (the growth of civilization becomes the cause of civilization's undoing).
Organized irresponsibility driven by complex causality.
Past:
— Big accidents caused by rushed growth and high-risk-taking.
— Failures of coordination between groups and institutions, and lack of awareness of coordination.
— Corruption and the collapse of public trust. Unrealistic laws and arbitrary enforcement.
— A lag in morality.
— Organizational cultures that fail to understand early warnings (individuals recognize, but the organization does not).
— A tendency to internalize risk-control (scapegoating, passing the buck).
→ External solutions are needed: fundamental solutions at the level of institutions and systems.
Types of accidents:
— Normal accidents: unavoidable. When the near-zero accident occurs, the damage is enormous and hard to attribute to individual error or misjudgment.
— Abnormal accidents: terror. The more complex and modern a civilization or a facility becomes, the more vulnerable it is to malicious attacks.
— Compound accidents: continuing Murphy's law and a complex-system causal structure: a system-design problem: unintended consequences of intended technology → domino effects (network disasters, the U.S. blackout, the KT Hyehwa-dong incident, the Daegu subway disaster).
Solutions
Need to define social risk: this has usually been pursued in welfare-related fields (poverty, society, unstable labor markets, orphans...).
KISTEP's role: diagnosing overall risk factors → a process to craft detailed allocation and consensus.
On R&B investment (preparation must go beyond prediction):
— Invest first in vulnerable targets in line with appropriate technology (analysis of Katrina damage: what was lacking was not technology but basics) (measurement technology required).
— Advance studies on the social ripple effects of new technologies (nano effects) must be conducted beforehand.
— Regular, long-term research projects (the government is currently running technology-impact assessments on brain–machine subjects).
Institutional role in the face of distrust is needed.
— Types of domestic organizations: mafia-like tendencies (tacit order, hierarchy, retainer-style) vs. (transparent contract, egalitarian, royal-rule style): paternalism and relationship-centered vs. unyielding principle: transparent handling < human relationships: no strict regulation: relationship-oriented (innovation-oriented, task-oriented, hierarchy-oriented cultures): objective, textbook problem-solving suggestions < communication problems → relationship-oriented
— Flexibility, focus on relationships with people, customer sensitivity, with focus on internal maintenance → innovation-oriented culture — emphasizes high flexibility and individuality while also focusing on the organization's external position — best responds to highly turbulent environments → task-oriented culture — focuses on the need for stability and control along with the organization's external position → hierarchy-oriented culture — above all, emphasizes the need for stability and control along with internal maintenance.
Institutional Trust Index, 2005 (trust ranking): my family > relatives > classmates > workplace > local shop owner > Korean society > the world > the President > the judiciary > foreign workers > the government > the National Assembly > a stranger.
Differences in risk perception
— Experts: scientific, probabilistic, acceptability, relative risk, population-average.
— Ordinary people: intuitive, absolute, safe-or-not, individual events, personal.
— Growth-oriented society: speed, outward form, results, economic approach, efficiency-centric approach — emphasizes present-day cost savings.
— Sustainable-development society: safety, substance, process, cultural approach, legitimacy-centric approach — emphasizes future-incurred costs.
→ Risk management is at the core of government policy — it is the act of balancing innovation and stability.
3. Issues observed so far
Terminology must be defined — if even experts do not share definitions, how much confusion can that cause when these things are conveyed to ordinary people? → frequent forums are needed.
Individual feedback on an issue happens quickly, but group-level analysis and decision-making are insufficient or slow.
Future-tech derivation based on experience → weak on future tech in areas not yet experienced.
Experience-based, science-and-tech response → insight-based, social/cooperative response needed.
Disasters, social risks, engineering and administrative techniques < citizens' civic culture matters (Japan's tsunami, people sharing food vs. Egypt and African refugees).
Public-interest ads encouraging consideration for others are gradually disappearing.
Cooperation across many fields is needed, long-term research on teamwork is needed, a plan for accumulating information over a long period is needed.
A harmony between engineering and civil society is needed.
Q&A time
1) Natural disasters + compound accidents (e.g., animals on highways) are happening. For compound problem-solving → countermeasures based on legal coordination across multiple ministries are needed.
2) A minimum standard that considers interdependence and relationality, and measures for the quantitative dimension. Science and tech + societal-cooperative response is needed.
3) Complex, interrelated; the system is complete, but not being executed. (Abroad: agreements built and revised through scenarios.) Integration of the knowledge of individual experts is needed.
4) Interest in green industries and energy is needed. Multi-angle approaches to future tech, demographic change, climate change, etc., are needed. (More frequent forums needed.) More active hosting and management, like the Nano Convergence Forum, is needed.
5) Analysis on mechanisms, IT convergence, statistics, and sensors is needed. Invite presenters related to convergence.
6) Grasp and classify the disaster-related issues arising in the private sector. The status of researchers at each disaster-prevention agency, participation from those in charge, and data sharing (including transparent disclosure of research-funding progress). (Experts regard nano-issues as policy, not research.)
7) 98 disaster technologies were selected. But for firms to commercialize them, market demand and forecasts are needed. In reality, they are losing importance in the market. So what does the forecast of market size look like? And what kind of thinking is going on around this? (Answer: none. They were selected based on expert knowledge.) → Technology selection needs to be grounded in evidence from advanced analytics and long-term surveys that yield credible data. A long-term understanding of how efforts to increase disaster-related budgets are being pursued is needed.
8) We need to periodically grasp the state of the disaster-convergence information network and continuously discuss future research directions.
