System Meltdown - How Things Really Work
Autor: Ricardo Gusmão | Publicado: 2016-07-30T14:24:00-03:00






How
self-sufficient we believe we are? How safe are we in our little
world of technology I-do-it-for-you? We have been so dependent on
technology and systems over the years that we can’t also notice how
vulnerable we are. Almost everything we use and depend today also
depends on chips, circuits and micro embedded systems. From the car
we drive, communication, to even basic necessities such as
electricity, water and food.

We
hava a small example about it when our cell phone is out of service
for just a while. Especially for those younger, who grew up in the
cell phone era. We become desperate!!! When 20 years ago the person
who had access to this kind of technology was quite rare. I didn’t
understand, when I was young and fashion, how people lived without
television.

Today
everything is so dependent on systems, technology and informatics
that requires complex plannings and huge investments to ensure the
things working.

Eletrobras
Distribuição Rondônia (a power company in North Region of Brazil),
for example, invested R$600 thousand to implement an Integrated
Operations Center (IOC), to gather in one place professionals and
services for Operation Center of Distribution of all regions of the
state, Departments of Distribution of Operations, Distribution itself
and Maintenance Services. The IOC is fully computerized to provide
the system operators all conditions to control, from anywhere, the
electrical installations of power substations, power lines and power
distribution network, keeping the economy, security and efficiency
needed to ensure continuity in the supply of distributed electricity.

The
more complex the environment is, the more investment and better
contingency planning are also required to prevent a failure in the
system. Firewalls, redundancy, backup plan, etc. And even with all
this, between 2011 and early 2014 were registered 181 blackouts in
BRazil, according to a survey of the Brazilian Center for
Infrastructure (CBIE). Furthermore, in a hacker invasion of the IOC
System, for example, it could turn off the power of an entire state.

In
SOuth Australia a death of a patient is under investigation, where
apparently there was a falt in the system that categorizes emergency
calls, by prioritizing in dispatch ambulances and giving advices of
procedures to be done. A patient died after the system flagged an
emergency call as a collapse when in fact the patient was unconscious
and not breathing. Thus the system also couldn’t send the advices
to give a little extra survival time for this patient, by someone
close to him, until the help arrives.

But
let’s get out from large and complex environments to a private,
small complex environment. The futuristic Driverless cars - a car
without drivers. NIssan is about to launch by August this year its
autopilot system, named ProPILOT. An autopilot system to be used in
heavy traffic situations, slow traffic or during extended commutes.

The
system can automatically manage the distance between the car and any
leading car, between speeds ranging from about 18mph to about 60mph,
also It also fully stoping when the car in front stops. It also keeps
the car in the lane, using a monocular 360-degree camera system
communicating with an on-board processing system. The plans are to
gradually introduce more autonomy, but it’s staging the release of
additional features. Lane switching in highway conditions is set to
come to ProPILOT in 2018, and city driving, including full
intersection negotiation, is currently supposed to make its debut in
2020.

Now
what happens if the system fails or is compromised while the car is
in motion? Even if for a brief moment, to the user recover the
control isn’t instantaneous and in between this moment a serious
accident may occur. A cyber-attack of this central system or some
critical failure can compromise the security of several drivers.


To
resume, I won’t to return to ride camels and use torches
throughtout my house. The point I’m trying to getting at is that we
still have a lot to improve in terms of technology to let things
totaly by system control. The manual and mechanical interaction is so
essential and necessary as safety to avoid disasters. The problem is
that we became so used to systems thinking for us that we even forgot
to think by ourselves!&nbsp;