From the California Water Blog:
“We read with great interest Nicholas Chistakis’s piece outlining a “Swiss Cheese Model For Combating Covid-19” in the Wall Street Journal. Christakis presents a model for considering the individual steps needed to achieve a larger goal, and how each step should fit into a larger strategy. He points out that each action used to limit the spread of Covid (handwashing, mask wearing, social distancing) creates a layer of imperfect defense akin to a slice of Swiss cheese. No action alone is 100% effective – there are holes. Yet in combination, multiple layers of the Swiss cheese become increasingly effective in limiting virus spread. This powerful analogy might be applied to other problems, from drinking water quality to fish conservation.
Indeed in water engineering, the “multiple barriers approach” is already a common strategy, e.g., for removing chemicals during the reuse of water (Marron et al. 2019). … “
Click here to read the full post at the California Water Blog.
