69f2 Ryan Shaw » 2007 » September

9/26/2007

Simulating Disaster

Filed under: berkeley, games — ryan @ 7:20 pm

This is pretty wild. This weekend the UC Berkeley police are participating in Urban Shield, in which various disaster scenarios are simulated in order to train and test emergency-response teams. Apparently one simulation will take place on the UC Berkeley campus, according to an email from the Vice Chancellor:

Warren Hall will be the site of an “active shooter” simulation. Especially in light of the tragic events at Virginia Tech and other past incidents of campus violence, the University is committed to the highest level of preparation and prevention possible, and is proud to participate in this opportunity to provide realistic and valuable training to so many law enforcement agencies.

Police personnel will begin staging equipment and preparing the building on the evening of Friday, September 28. At 5:00 am on September 29 (Saturday) the exercise will begin. Activity will include role-player movements on the first and ground floor of Warren Hall, the arrival and departure of personnel and vehicles in Mulford Hall parking lot, and some loud noises. The scenario will repeat once every other hour for the entire weekend, day and night, ending before 9:00 am on Monday, October 1.

That’s at least 24 “active shooters” over the course of the weekend… jesus.

9/12/2007

Turning Pages

Filed under: General — ryan @ 9:33 am

I’ve been turning a lot of pages lately, both figuratively and literally. The latter because I’m preparing for my qualifying exam (date TBA, but no later than December, hopefully). The former is due my renewed focus on academic life: I’ve left Yahoo! Research Berkeley, where I spent 2 great years exploring the enigma that is “social media.” I was sad to leave, but am happy to have more time to focus on my Ph.D. research, and to be more involved in all the great stuff going on at Berkeley, like the Berkeley Center for New Media. More on that later.

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