Today I had a procedure of tooth extraction and bone transplant. so I am semi-functioning with stitches in my mouth for the next week. The reasons for the fuel pollution that paralyzed all flights from Israel yesterday is still in investigation, so the event was not classified yet to black or white swan. If it will be classified to a black swan event this will be a second instance of the same event within 5 years, so it is interesting if a second instance qualifies as a black swan.
Israel is a one-airport country (there are several small ones for internal flights, but with the exception of some charter flights, all international flights go through Ben-Gurion Airport, near Tel-Aviv, given this fact, anytime that this airport does not function (e.g.due to strike) it becomes a major news item. Today all aircrafts were grounded due to the fact that the fuel that were inserted to the aircrafts was polluted, due to a pollution that has been discovered in the fuel facility in the airport, many flights were cancelled, and other delayed were filled with a small amount of fuel that will enable them to fly to one of the nearest airport (mostly in Cyprus, some in Jordan) and refuel, the picture above taken from the YNET news site show passengers that are stranded in the airport, Is such event a black swan event ? seems so, but surprisingly this is the second instance of this event, such event happened before at the same airport a few years ago, and took a day to recover.
From event processing point of view the interesting questions about such events are:
- Can black swan events be predicted? first time that they happen? second time that they happen? - this actually similar to the question - can we instantiate Merphy's laws -- infer everything that can go wrong?
- How can rules and actions about treating black swan events can be set, if we cannot even imagine the event's nature?
The earthquake in Japan made thinking about black swan events more popular, the challenge is to advance the thinking in that area.
