Innovation in Demolition: A Case Study from the Cleanup of Ground Zero

The deconstruction of Ground Zero following the 2001 World Trade Center attack required massive mobilizations of equipment and personnel, all directed towards the speedy removal of 1.6 million tons of material from the site. Remarkably, this was accomplished ahead of schedule, below budget, and without any serious injury. The scale and tight time schedule of the operation made it unique among debris removal operations. Complicating matters was the need to invent new procedures and new management structures in order to meet the project’s goals. This study uses data directly associated with these operations to develop a set of preliminary design requirements for information systems intended to support large-scale debris removal operations following disasters. The results of the analysis suggest that such systems should be extensible, so that they can be used within and among unpredictable organizational structures; flexible, so that they support real-time generation of new procedures; and integratable, so that they are capable of communicating with a variety of other systems.