ACQUIRING AND MANAGING EARTHQUAKE DATA

To buy or to build. That is the classic question in technology management. Before asking that question however, the data host entity which could either be a government agency or a private company has to ask themselves how much money is already available or could potentially be made available, based on an objective needs analysis. In the case of acquiring and managing earthquake data however, it would be fair to assume that since we are talking about saving lives and property, whatever money is already available will probably be not enough, and there would always be a need to make more money available. There is surely no question whether it is needed or not. To buy or to build involves either buying data that is already commercially available, or to build the infrastructure that could collect data from raw sources, for purposes of data consolidation and analytics, two back-to-back processes that would ultimately result in possessing data that could have been commercially bought. In the overall, I think it would be more practical to acquire data that is already available from both commercial and official sources, instead of building the infrastructure ourselves. The official sources could be tapped using diplomatic channels, under the aegis of economic diplomacy. We could start with techno-economic cooperation within the ASEAN, since we have common interests with all its members. IKE SENERES/02-25-24