去年9月17日,美国海军战争学院与美国国家灾难医学与公共卫生中心联合举办了一场名为“城市爆发”的防疫演习。受战争学院研究员兼演习设计者本杰明·戴维斯邀请,来自美国政府、军队、学术界、私营单位及非营利机构的50名灾难应对专家齐聚马里兰州劳雷尔的约翰·霍普金斯大学应用物理实验室,共同参与本次为期两天的演习。
据戴维斯介绍,本次演习的背景为:某座人口密集的大都市突然出现了某种致命病菌,演习目的则是弄清楚当人们遇到这样一个“极其危险和复杂的情况”时会做出何种反应,简而言之,就是弄清楚我们是否为之做好了准备。
本次演习后不到三个月,武汉发现了首批新冠病毒感染案例。此后三个月内,全球一百多个国家均发现感染案例,不仅令远至首尔、西雅图等地的政府和公共卫生体系不堪重负,也迫使距离疫情中心8000多公里外的欧洲大国不得不宣布全国隔离。
与戴维斯在虚构城市“奥林匹亚”模拟的疫病爆发一样,现实中的新冠疫情大爆发也向我们揭示了一个令人震惊(如果不算意外的话)的事实:我们此前并未做好准备,现在也依然没有做好准备。
“城市爆发”演习视觉图,本次演习由研究员、演习设计者本杰明·戴维斯牵头。
正如戴维斯所说,9月份的演习可以算是一次成功的行动。毕竟,演习旨在发现资源配备的不足以及各方在沟通中可能出现的问题,包括偏见、混乱、不可避免的冲突以及在哪些领域会亟需领导力、调整策略。演习的目标就是要从中总结经验,从而为下一次危机的到来做好准备。
戴维斯同时还是海军战争学院人道主义支援项目的行动专家,他表示:“演习能够帮助我们很好地发现问题背后隐藏的各种关键要素。大家齐聚一堂,相互介绍自己的方案时,各种新问题就会纷至沓来:物资何时抵达?用卡车还是直升机运输?直升机降落在哪?军人如果发现绝望的民众在向他们靠近该怎么办?
他表示,由此类问题导致的混乱局面或者不确定性,让参与者在制订最佳策略时感到不知所措。
这使我想到了这一期的《财富》杂志。这起杂志刊发了“全球变暖”专题。这个问题对人类文明的威胁很可能远大于当前新冠病毒的传播。
虽然我们的平台是二维的,但目标并无二致:了解我们是否已为应对危机做好了准备;了解企业界当前在这些方面所做工作的差距与不足,通过提出这些关键问题,当我们在未来真正遇到危机时,或许能够更好地做出反应。
可以肯定的说,全球的企业以及大量消费其所提供产品、服务的消费者共同造成了我们今天面临的很多气候与环境问题。但就像布莱恩·奥基夫副主编在封面介绍中所写的那样,商界同样也有机会推动解决这些问题。据一项估计显示,这里甚至还蕴藏着高达26万亿美元的商机。
需要强调的是,如果不选择大胆行动,等待我们的结果不是“一切照旧”,而是“彻底完蛋”。(财富中文网)
本文另一版本刊载于《财富》杂志2020年4月刊,标题为:《博弈论》
译者:梁宇
审校:夏林
去年9月17日,美国海军战争学院与美国国家灾难医学与公共卫生中心联合举办了一场名为“城市爆发”的防疫演习。受战争学院研究员兼演习设计者本杰明·戴维斯邀请,来自美国政府、军队、学术界、私营单位及非营利机构的50名灾难应对专家齐聚马里兰州劳雷尔的约翰·霍普金斯大学应用物理实验室,共同参与本次为期两天的演习。
据戴维斯介绍,本次演习的背景为:某座人口密集的大都市突然出现了某种致命病菌,演习目的则是弄清楚当人们遇到这样一个“极其危险和复杂的情况”时会做出何种反应,简而言之,就是弄清楚我们是否为之做好了准备。
本次演习后不到三个月,武汉发现了首批新冠病毒感染案例。此后三个月内,全球一百多个国家均发现感染案例,不仅令远至首尔、西雅图等地的政府和公共卫生体系不堪重负,也迫使距离疫情中心8000多公里外的欧洲大国不得不宣布全国隔离。
与戴维斯在虚构城市“奥林匹亚”模拟的疫病爆发一样,现实中的新冠疫情大爆发也向我们揭示了一个令人震惊(如果不算意外的话)的事实:我们此前并未做好准备,现在也依然没有做好准备。
“城市爆发”演习视觉图,本次演习由研究员、演习设计者本杰明·戴维斯牵头。
正如戴维斯所说,9月份的演习可以算是一次成功的行动。毕竟,演习旨在发现资源配备的不足以及各方在沟通中可能出现的问题,包括偏见、混乱、不可避免的冲突以及在哪些领域会亟需领导力、调整策略。演习的目标就是要从中总结经验,从而为下一次危机的到来做好准备。
戴维斯同时还是海军战争学院人道主义支援项目的行动专家,他表示:“演习能够帮助我们很好地发现问题背后隐藏的各种关键要素。大家齐聚一堂,相互介绍自己的方案时,各种新问题就会纷至沓来:物资何时抵达?用卡车还是直升机运输?直升机降落在哪?军人如果发现绝望的民众在向他们靠近该怎么办?
他表示,由此类问题导致的混乱局面或者不确定性,让参与者在制订最佳策略时感到不知所措。
这使我想到了这一期的《财富》杂志。这起杂志刊发了“全球变暖”专题。这个问题对人类文明的威胁很可能远大于当前新冠病毒的传播。
虽然我们的平台是二维的,但目标并无二致:了解我们是否已为应对危机做好了准备;了解企业界当前在这些方面所做工作的差距与不足,通过提出这些关键问题,当我们在未来真正遇到危机时,或许能够更好地做出反应。
可以肯定的说,全球的企业以及大量消费其所提供产品、服务的消费者共同造成了我们今天面临的很多气候与环境问题。但就像布莱恩·奥基夫副主编在封面介绍中所写的那样,商界同样也有机会推动解决这些问题。据一项估计显示,这里甚至还蕴藏着高达26万亿美元的商机。
需要强调的是,如果不选择大胆行动,等待我们的结果不是“一切照旧”,而是“彻底完蛋”。(财富中文网)
本文另一版本刊载于《财富》杂志2020年4月刊,标题为:《博弈论》
译者:梁宇
审校:夏林
On Sept. 17, the U.S. Naval War College and the National Center for Disaster Medicine & Public Health began a war-game simulation they called Urban Outbreak. Benjamin Davies, a researcher and game designer at the college, gathered 50 experts in disaster response from the government, military, academia, and the private and nonprofit sectors for two days of exercises at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md.
The aim, Davies told me, was to see how people would respond in real time to “a profoundly dangerous and complex problem set”—the sudden arrival of a deadly pathogen in a dense metropolis. The question, in short: Would we be ready?
Within three months of that exercise, the first cases of illness from a novel strain of coronavirus were being identified in Wuhan, China, a city of 11 million people. In the three months since then, the virus has spread to more than 100 countries, overwhelmed governments and health care systems in cities as far-flung as Seoul and Seattle, and forced the quarantine of an entire European nation more than 5,000 miles away from the disease’s epicenter.
Just as with Davies’s simulated outbreak in the fictional city of “Olympia,” the real-life coronavirus outbreak has revealed a striking, if not unexpected lesson: We weren’t— and still aren’t—ready.
As Davies explained, that takeaway from the September simulation was a mark of success. The exercise, after all, was designed to reveal the resource gaps and communication failures among the players—the biases and confusions, the inevitable confrontations and areas where leadership and revised strategies are badly needed. The goal was to learn from all that and be ready the next time.
“Games have a wonderful tendency to raise hidden critical issues that remain just under the surface of a problem or interaction,” said Davies, who is also the operations specialist for the Naval War College’s humanitarian response program. “When you get all those people in the same room, and they lay out their plans in front of each other, suddenly all new issues arise: What time of day will the shipment arrive? By truck or helicopter? Where will the helicopter land? What will the military do if desperate people approach them?”
Each question can spiral into confusion or uncertainty, he says, and confound players as they chart the best course of action.
Which brings me to this issue of Fortune. Consider the stories in our April issue as our version of a war game for a crisis that may pose an even greater threat to civilization than the current spread of the coronavirus: the warming of the planet.
The platform here may be two-dimensional, but the goal is the same: to raise critical questions about our readiness to respond; and to shine a light on the gaps and ineffectiveness of the business community’s current efforts on these fronts so that, perhaps, we can mount a more robust response moving forward.
To be sure, global industry—and yes, those of us who rabidly consume the products and services these businesses provide—caused many of the climate and environmental problems we face today. But then, as deputy editor Brian O’Keefe writes in his introduction to the package, business is also in a position to try to fix them. There’s even a $26 trillion market opportunity for those who do, according to one estimate.
The alternative to acting boldly, it should be emphasized, isn’t “business as usual.” It’s “game over.”
A version of this article appears in the April 2020 issue of Fortune with the headline "Game Theory."