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I am interested in the Macro scale and the macro effects evident at a city-scale level. I remember visiting New Orleans in 2016 and vividly remember seeing several signs with a large 'No' symbol drawn and the text  "neighbors not tourists" printed on the sign. Recently, as part of my research into New Orleans, I stumbled on this piece by the Guardian on how short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb are leading to gentrification in New Orleans. Highlighted in the article is how several Airbnb hosts do not reside on the listed premises. I remember the place we stayed, as we were a large party, having a 617 prefix number.  The prefix stood out as I knew the code 617 represented Boston and was curious what someone with ties to Boston doing in New Orleans as a host. In a similar vein, the article also highlights the problem of absentee hosts, hosts who acquire property for the sole purpose of setting up the property as an Airbnb site.

To tackle the problem, one councilwoman passed a law that required any Airbnb hosts in residential zones to have a homestead exemption verifying they live on site. In this case, a city-wide measure was taken and passed into law affecting the micro. It is common to have one host having several properties in different residential areas in New Orleans. From a technical standpoint, it could be viewed that Airbnb as technology is developed and presented as a scalable product. With no limits to reproducibility. Meanwhile, real-life discontinuities exist in the form of such homestead laws. It is impossible to live in more than one homestead at the same time. In other words, the concept of the human is not scalable.
Likewise, neither is cultural heritage. The city of New Orleans positions its self as a city with great cultural heritage. It is through this heritage that they seek to draw more and more tourists. How do cities think of scaling up successful initiatives and how do they navigate the political, social, ecological, or economic entanglements. At what point is downscaling necessary? Is culture scalable?

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/new-orleans-airbnb-trem…

I am currently a Ph.D. student interested in exploring the entanglements of scale, especially in the context of environmental sensing.  My primary research seeks to engage in discourse around the value of scalability that is presented as inherent in computation. While the term scale-up is almost synonymous with computation, sustainability; on the other hand, is known as a problem of scale. Take for example, the discourse on climate change where the actions required to combat climate change requires interventions at different scales. In this context, demanding changes at individual scales while no corresponding changes happen at larger scales would not yield much.

In looking at New Orleans, I came across a video on IoT cameras developed by Cisco, the networking giant. What struck me other than the apparent rise of surveillance capitalism was the narrative of one of the police officers highlighted in the video. The officer mentions that it is not feasible for the city to place police officers on every corner. In the context of scale, the police officer is implying that cameras are useful as they extend the police officer's ability to surveil the city. In other words, cameras and the networks help scale up the police officer, making it possible for them to cover a larger scale than before.

One of the police officers, in the video, also mentions that New Orleans is a tourist and hospitable town. Which brings up the question at any given period, what scale of visitors can New Orleans support without stretching the city's resources? Several other cities in the world have made efforts to limit visitors, in order not stretch city resources. The recent crisis at Mount Everest is an excellent example of what happens when resources are stretched to accommodate the increasing number of local visitors. How could something of this nature similarly impact New Orleans?

At the communication center where the video feed is analyzed, the IT manager provides reasons as to why they chose Cisco as their vendor. One of the reasons he gives was that the system is easily expandable, allowing the ability to scale out/up the network.

The report implies that technical professionals have to be more careful when responding to large scale disasters; staff responding to emergencies need to have more training for the many internal challenges that would lmit care and assistance to victims. MSF discussed how they had limited man power, labs, and resources.

Disaster investigations look at the emergency response that followed the incident, either the timing or actions taken to save human lives. There's more about the investigations calling for improved emergency preparedness; policies and technology development to prevent disasters such as the Hague Street Explosion (1850) which involved a faulty boiler (and other factors) and the Iroquois theater fire (1903) which led to changed theater building policies. 

The policy is a disaster relief act aimed to provide governmental aid/ assistance at the local, state, and national levels for emergency preparedness and response in the event of a major disaster. 

The policy is to extend Good Samaritan laws to first responders so that they would not be liable for "spreading contamination while attempting to save lives."

Miriam Ticktin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at The New School For Social Research in New York City. Her research focuses on "what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity" and more recently looks at humanitarianism at various levels. For emergency response her work focuses more on response done for humanitarian aid and displaced peoples. 

http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/?id=4d54-6379-4e44-4d35

The author is Sonja D. Schmid, an associate professor at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society. She specializes in STS (science, tech, and society) analysis, nuclear industries, and energy policies. In respect to emergency response, Schmid is able to use her knowledge of previous disasters, current energy technologies, and societal influences to address what we need nationally/ internationally for how we should respond to emergencies. The ability to identify the multifaceted levels of what causes disasters is important to properly responding to them- by changing technologies, training and education of communities, and changing energy policies to avoid and handle more disaster.

Publications relevant to the DSTS Network: "Evacuation from a nuclear disaster" (http://www.jstor.org/stable/214548?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents), "A comparative institutional analysis of the Fukushima nuclear disaster: Lessons and policy implications" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512009433)

Research focusing on nuclear waste management, developments for safer nuclear energy and studies of the nuclear arms race are also relevant to DSTS Network.

1. USAID and their contributions to Haiti

2. The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and their impact

3. The United Nations and if they've been sued by Haiti for cholera epidemic