Fire Destroys Southampton Fibre-Optics Center

Sam Haine '95 writes "BBC News reports that a fire has burnt down a CS facility at the University of Southampton. It's notable because the facility was one of the best in the world." From the article: "Some of the most advanced research work in the country, and indeed the world was carried out in this facility ... We probably will have to start from scratch, and it will take a couple of years to rebuild the facility"

Comments

That is certainly unfortunate.

[Sheetrock]

The only two things that I can think of that might be of some consolation are that because this dealt with technology much of the research should be in electronic form and backed up and that many times you'll discover a more efficient way of doing things when you go back and design the same thing a second time (although one normally does not have the luxury/misfortune to do so).

Worst case scenario more like couple of decades

[MMaestro]

More like couple of decades worst case scenario. Even assuming they backed up all their data off-site, its gonna take years to clean up and build a new building (~1 year for cleaning, estimate about 2~5 years to rebuild and bring the whole thing back up to speed). On top of construction, theres the loss of the machines, facilities and temporary unability to do work elsewhere for sometime (can't replicate that kind of research in your average college computer lab.) Theres also the now temporarily work-less researchers, the obvious political fallout and having to figure out how the fire started in the first place. Theres also the matter of who's gonna foot the bill for cleaning, construction and replacing all the lost material. On top of ALL that, I doubt theres a magic 'put everything back the way it was before button' on the backup servers which can instantly bring all the data back for researchers quickly and easily.

Combined, you're looking at an easy 5 years lost research time best case scenario. Worst case scenario you're looking at anywhere between 10~30 years lost time since some scientists may not want to wait for the facilities to be rebuilt and just take their expertise elsewhere and their not the sort you can replace easily. Theres always the distant (but unlikely) possibility, that they might not even rebuild the facilties and simply shelf or sell off the data to others.

And of course, this doesn't even touch the financial costs, the damage to the school's prestige and damage to the school's pride.