Work Group Exercise No 2. BES 301 Autumn 2005

October 17 in class

The cleanup and rebuilding in the hurricane aftermath in New Orleans will be an enormous undertaking. In order to begin to comprehend the problem it is probably useful to apply “Fermi Problem” thinking to different aspects of it. For example, since many homes may be ruined and need to be removed, it is relevant to be able to estimate how long it would take just to accomplish this very large disposal task. The problem as stated below applies only to residential housing (single family homes) in New Orleans:

Using only this data, each group estimated the length of time required to dispose of all the houses damaged to the point of needing removal. The estimates varied from a minimum of 9 months to a maximum of about 4 years.

As with most applications of Fermi problem solving, the estimates of the five groups for each individual aspect of the task varied widely. But, the overall estimates varied much less, with a consensus of “from one to a few years”.