Simulating Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Plans for
a Public University: A Hierarchical System Dynamics Approach
Tim
Lant, Ozgur Merih Araz, Megan Jehn, Cody Christensen, and John Fowler (Arizona
State University)
Abstract:
Pandemic influenza preparedness plans strongly focus on
efficient mitigation strategies including social distancing, logistics and
medical response. These strategies are formed by multiple decision-makers
before pandemic outbreak and during the disaster by decision makers in local
communities, states and nationwide. Depending on the community that will be
affected by pandemic influenza, different strategies should be employed to
decrease the severity of the disaster in multiple dimensions of social life.
In this paper, a system dynamics methodology is applied to model the
population behaviors and the effects of pandemic influenza on a public
university community. The system is simulated for multiple non-pharmaceutical
interventions with several policies that can be employed by local decision
makers. System components are constructed from the pandemic influenza
preparedness plan of one of the largest universities in the country. The
policies and the decisions are tested by simulation runs and evaluations of
the mitigation strategies are presented.
Application of Spatial Visualization for Probabilistic
Hurricanes Risk Assessment to Build Environment
Yue Li and Tyler A
Erickson (Michigan Technological University)
Abstract:
Hurricanes have caused extensive economic losses and
social disruption in the past two decades in the United States. A key
component for improving building and infrastructure practices and public
planning to reduce the economic losses due to hurricanes and their social
impact is the ability to predict the expected damage that such events cause in
buildings and other structures as well as the uncertainties in such
predictions. Federal, state and county emergency management officers need an
effective real-time tool to facilitate the decision regarding when evacuate
should begin and who should evacuate before a hurricane, as long as how to
timely conduct post-disaster relief. Modern internet-based geospatial tools
can be effectively used to provide decision makers with real-time data, model
results, and geospatial reference datasets. Probabilistic risk assessment
model combined with spatial distributed visualization is proposed in this
paper for more efficient hurricane hazard mitigation through risk informed
communication.
Dynamic Security: An Agent-Based Model for Airport
Defense
William E. Weiss (The MITRE Corporation)
Abstract:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shifted the
focus of airport security in 2004 to incorporate the need to continuously and
rapidly adapt security to shifting threats. MITRE is developing a Dynamic
Security Airport Simulation as part of a MITRE-sponsored research project in
which attacker and defense behavior in the airport environment are modeled.
The simulation accepts threat vectors (path-weapon combinations) from other
software or the user and models the performance of the airport defense against
those threat vectors. The simulation includes two intelligent agents: the
attacker and the defense. These agents model the behavior of those two
entities; their logic includes both decision making and learning.
