From the President, Jeff Beavers, RCDD, OSP, CFHP
ROAD CLOSED
DUE TO NETWORK OUTAGE
(Unless You’re Fond of Mississippi)
shows that their evidence is mostly irrelevant. The issue is
confusing because the skills required to work with new tech-
nologies are hard to measure. They are even harder to manage.
Understanding this controversy sheds some light on what
employers and government need to do to deal with a very
real problem.”3
“Why are skills sometimes hard to measure and to manage?
Because new technologies frequently require specific new
skills that schools don’t teach and that labor markets don’t
supply. Since information technologies have radically
changed much work over the last couple of decades,
employers have had persistent difficulty finding workers
who can make the most of these new technologies.”4
Technology to some degree is still considered an amenity
and something nice to have. Technology at times is referred
to as the fourth utility, and it is regarded as a must have, but
it is not.
I did not know it back then, but my counting 1-Mississippi,
2- Mississippi and so on was what I understand now as latency.
I cannot imagine a scenario where any latency from sensing
and initiating the braking process to when the brakes are
engaged would be acceptable. The uninitiated may not
know what ICT is, but they might understand “IoT”
and “connected.”
A road closed due to network outage is an “amenity” that
will not be accepted. It will demand a skilled workforce. Be
safe; someone is counting on you.
REFERENCES:
1. Pretz, Kathy. “Internet of Things Technology Will Connect
Highways, Street Lights, and Vehicles.” IEEE Spectrum. 20 June
2019. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-institute/ieee-products-
services/internet-of-things-technology-will-connect-highwaysstreet
lights-and-vehicles
2. “6 Key Connectivity Requirements of Autonomous Driving,”
IEEE Spectrum, https://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/
advanced-cars/6-key-connectivity-requirements-of-autonomous
driving
3. White Paper: Why Certify Data Centre Structured Cabling,
https://www.flukenetworks.com/content/white-paper-why-
certify-data-centre-structured-cabling
4. Bessen, James. “Employers Aren’t Just Whining – the 'Skills
Gap' Is Real.” Harvard Business Review. 25 August 2014.
https://hbr.org/2014/08/employers-arent-just-whining-the-
skills-gap-is-real
October/November/December 2019 I 5
During my early driving years, I had access to my Dad’s Jeep.
It was a blue 1978 Jeep CJ5 Renegade Levi’s Edition. I didn’t
appreciate the value that Jeep would have years later. If
only I owned it today. I used to joke about driving it and how
I had to plan ahead to stop. The braking process was as
follows: (1) step on the brake pedal (2) count… 1-Mississippi,
2-Mississippi, 3-Mississippi, 4-Mississippi (3) then, the Jeep
would come to a stop.
In part, it was due to older technology and the use of drum
brakes. Drum brakes tend to heat up quickly. When they heat
up, they tend to fade because hot brakes produce less fric-
tion, which makes them less effective. The other part was due
to my driving habits, such as erratic driving and braking too
late that contributed to brake fade. The factors were that
technology and drum brakes were at odds with the human
element, which was my driving expertise or lack thereof.
Many of the technologies we know, such as the emer-
gence of PoE lighting, are technically doable, but the human
element—change, territorial, regulatory, jurisdictional—are
often barriers to acceptance.
The internet of things (IoT) will connect highways, street
lights, and vehicles via a system that includes sensors embedded
in the roadway and on traffic lights. This will be a part of
a highly interconnected ecosystem.
“An IoT-enabled traffic-monitoring system uses a combination
of vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, and infrastructure
to-infrastructure communication systems and
analytics to manage traffic situations…”1
“V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communications must continuously
capture and interpret complete data concerning the
surrounding environment. Fully autonomous vehicles require
all of this information to correctly execute actions such as
braking or accelerating without driver assistance.”2
If all this is not enough of a challenge, there is also a short-
age of highly technical ICT talent in the workforce.
Our connected world is advancing faster than humans can
adapt or adopt, as in the case of training, standards and best
practices that could ensure interoperability.
Since the 90s, statistics revealed that 70 percent of network
downtime was due to cabling problems. These statistics were
pre-IoT when “all” that ICT pertained to was the voice and
data network. More recent statistics point to cabling problems
being the cause of half of all network failures. So, there has
been improvement in the industry.
Rapid technological advancements and changes in how
we use technology in all of life’s activities make it more
difficult for those uninitiated with ICT to put the need into
proper perspective.
“The critics cite economic evidence to argue that there
are no major shortages of skilled workers. But a closer look
/ieee-products-
/
/white-paper-why-
/employers-arent-just-whining-the-