Decision Making in Very Large Networks was originally published in:

Communications of the ACM
Volume 49, Number 11 (2006), Pages 19-23

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina's 35-foot storm surge and strong winds damaged over 90,000 square miles of Louisiana and Mississippi. The damaged area lost most basic infrastructures: power, communications, water, transportation, and law-and-order. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was charged to coordinate numerous federal, state, and local agencies in a massive relief effort. Although there was no official timetable, early statements by local officials and by wishful commentators led many people to believe the FEMA-coordinated network could complete search and rescue operations within a week, restore power and communications within two weeks, get basic food and necessities distribution working within a month, and make substantial progress toward repair and rebuilding within a year. The network achieved none of these objectives. Instead, it was plagued by severe interorganization coordination problems, jurisdictional disputes, information overload, and fraud and waste of relief funds.

Although leadership and planning were rightly criticized, few have asked whether leadership was really the problem. There are good reasons to believe that no hierarchical, centrally directed network, such as the federal agencies attempted, could have met those expectations. We'll explore why this may be so.