NJ Transit's Misuse of Storm Modeling Software: An Unfortunate Example of Harm Prevention Failure

December 10, 2012

The federal government storm modeling software used by New Jersey Transit underestimated the threat posed by storm surges to the Meadows Maintenance Complex, resulting in millions of dollars worth of damaged equipment before Hurricane Sandy. This AI incident maps to the Govern function in HISPI Project Cerebellum Trusted AI Model (TAIM). Ready to help establish guardrails for AI and ensure safe and secure operation? JOIN US
Alleged deployer
new-jersey-transit
Alleged developer
national-weather-service
Alleged harmed parties
new-jersey-transit, new-jersey-transit-passengers

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/536

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.