IBM solves all challenges in a natural disaster in under an hour!

From Paul Currion comes a pointer to this tragi-comic article on IBM’s latest discovery – complex algorithm that solve all challenges, even unknown ones related to natural disaster preparedness and management:

…The model allows all unforeseen challenges to be solved, mostly within an hour, and has very good scalability that promises to gracefully manage even larger models in the future.IBM scientists developed a large-scale strategic budgeting framework based on Stochastic algorithms for managing natural disaster events, with a focus on better preparedness for future uncertain disaster scenarios. The underlying optimization models and algorithms were initially prototyped on a large unnamed US Government program, where the key problem was how to efficiently deploy a large number of critical resources to a range of disaster event scenarios.  The same models can be explored to manage floods or famines in India, or natural disasters anywhere in the world, IBM said.

Another article on the same issue notes that as the modeling becomes more sophisticated, IBM researchers have been able to infuse the models with “human” factors, such as politics, custom and culture. “As researchers factor in human behavior in the models, the results grow less uncertain and more accurate and acceptable.”

Bloody hell.

I guess the IBM researchers have also come up the answer to life, the universe and everything.