On 4/13/2009 at 1:12 PM, Peter Beckman <beckman@angryox.com> wrote: On Mon, 13 Apr 2009, Scott Weeks wrote:
--- beckman@angryox.com wrote:
I still think skipping the securing of manholes and access points in favor of active monitoring with offsite access is a better solution.
The only thing missing from your plan was a cost analysis. Cost of each, plus operational costs, * however many of each type. How much would that be?
So, let's see. I'm pulling numbers out of my butt here, but basing it on non-quantity-discounted hardware available off the shelf. -----------------------------------------
Manpower to design, build, maintain, train folks and monitor in the NOC. Costs of EMS, its maintenance. blah, blah, blah...
My estimates are for getting something off the ground, equipment-wise, not operationally.
What is the cost of the outages?
From what we know of this specific one, would an alarm have stopped
But would alarms prevent any, or what proportion, of these incidents? the perpetrator(s)? It would have bought the NOC five, ten minutes tops before they got the alarm on the circuit. And in practice would a manhole alarm translate to a call to Homeland Security to have the SEALs descend the site pronto, a police unit to roll by when it has the time, or is it going to be an AT&T truck rolling by between calls? I'm guessing number two or three, probably three. So what would it get them in this case. If it doesn't deter these guys, who does it deter? And what are the costs of false alarms? What will the ratio of "real" alarms to false ones be? Maybe lower-stakes vandals take to popping the edge of manhole covers as a little prank. Or that one that triggers whenever a truck tire hits it right. Or the whole line of them that go off whenever the temperature drops below freezing. Or, what I am absolutely sure will happen, miscommunication between repair crews and the NOC about which ones are being moved or field crews opening them without warning the NOC (or even intra-NOC communication). Will they be a boy who cried wolf?