Natural Disasters Reflection

1. For this assignment, analyzing the images was not without difficulty. I used a couple of different resources. The main thing I wanted was to learn how to read Doppler. I was marginally successful. I found a pretty good basic article on the subject at:

https://www.wolframscience.com/summerschool/2014/alumni/files/Howtoreadandinterpretweatherradar.pdf

I used this information to determine what the various colors mean, what the bits, and returns and echos are, and what certain patterns mean. The above link is actually very in-depth for being a novice guide, but it was very interesting.

For analyzing the visible and infrared imagery, I drew upon my knowledge from the class, the textbook, and I also google searched images of various storms. This part was difficult. I still don't can't say whether I'm looking at an MCS or a squall line. A squall line is a long string of storms, but MCS storms can form long lines as well. It didn't appear to me to be perfectly straight and it looked like there was an area of lower pressure that the top end of the storm was moving around, and the doppler showed holes as well, so I decided to go with mesoscale convective system.

2. The second part of this reflection asks whether citizens should be better at interpreting their world through satellite imagery, and whether or not this type of imagery is ethical from a surveillance standpoint.

As to the first part of the question, I am a lover of history. I enjoy thinking about who we are and where we came from and why we are the way we are. Throughout this course, I have been astonished at the technical achievements of mankind in coming together to learn how our world works and how we can prepare for and mitigate disasters.

I think about agriculturalists a thousand years ago and what value this technology would have had for them. I think a great deal about how we become less and less vulnerable to the elements and to what we once thought of as "chance", which it turns out is somewhat predictable.

So, for this question I would say that any bit of information that average people can use to improve their lives and their understanding of the world should be used, and that we should all feel pretty grateful to live in the period of time that we do. I also think that we do already use these things in our daily lives. Satellite imagery finds it's way into all sorts of apps that people use for everything from weather to navigation, to even watching earthquakes as they happen around the world, which is an app a friend showed me just a few months ago.

I think that because of the advances in environmental and other technologies, we're all becoming much more aware of the world we live in.

As to the second part of the question, people have a right to privacy. Philosophically they do, but more importantly, your right to privacy in the U.S. is guaranteed under the Constitution under a combination of the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 14th Amendments. There would be major ethical issues if this satellite surveillance fell into the hands of a bad regime. This plus phone and internet surveillance, plus financial surveillance through credit cards, plus autonomous weapons would pretty much guarantee a thousand-year dictatorship. There may be some civil liberties issues, yes.