EconTech

There SEEMS to have been a lot of recent crane collapses, more than in any other time that I can think of. However, not being an automated data collector, I am not particularly confident in such memories. The reason I ask is that I am told that there is a global shortage of cranes. After an inspector was arrested for negligence in the inspection of one of the previous crane collapses, I am curious as to what extent the shortage of cranes is putting pressure on companies to operate cranes on the fringe of safety. More importantly, whether such operations have led to an increase in the accident rate. My knowledge in this area is extremely limited to what the media reports, so any analysis I did would be rather cursory. Nevertheless, if anyone knows where I can get some numbers on domestic and global crane accidents, crane prices, and cranes supplied, let me know. I’d like to see if there are any relationships in the numbers.

Also, I am interested in doing some analysis of the response rate and scale of various humanitarian organizations and IGOs, namely the ICRC, MSF, WHO, USAID, UK’s Department of International Aid, and WFP as well as total aid responses and scales to the various crises in question. I am particularly interested in numbers for the past two years in Burma/Myanmar. For Cyclone Nargis and the 2004 tsunami, India’s aid response would also be interesting to know. There are a number of aid provisioning philosophies I would like to test the effectiveness of (both long and short term) but need some data. Deliverables will be poorly measured due to the frequency of theft by armed groups (including governments) when crises strike (or engineered, depending on the situation). Ideas for how to differentiate aid supplied versus actual receptions would be appreciated. However that plays out, I haven’t found any tables yet and am becoming tempted to start grokking press releases to build my own dataset. However, if I resort to that, the chances of my finishing said project decrease dramatically.