Tromso

The avalanche map is accurate.

This is the problem.

In Tromsø, forecasts begin becoming decisions before any human being actually makes one. A risk model triggers an alert. The alert triggers an evacuation. The evacuation triggers staffing, procurement, insurance, media briefings and eventually a very impressive chain of people explaining that somebody else made the decision.

Reality Services would like to know who.

The answer appears to be a map.

The map declines comment.

Soon the city is confronting a dangerous administrative discovery: knowing what might happen is not the same as deciding what to do about it.

This produces longer warning labels, irritated software engineers and the radical requirement that an actual person accept responsibility before moving a nursing home full of elderly people through a Norwegian winter.

Performance metrics worsen.

Fatality projections improve.

Reality Services accepts the trade.

The mountain remains unavailable for stakeholder consultation.

Included free: a complete story from The Office of the Second Census. Their forecasting problem is somewhat simpler because most of their clients have already died.