Policy and Social Behavior
Making the right decision in the wake of catastrophic disasters is the key to a successful response rate for saving critical infrastructure. LANL’s model incorporates the human behavioral component, a key element for risk management scenarios.
Decision makers need to understand the consequences of policy and investment options before they enact solutions. The most effective way is to utilize a decision support system that incorporates threat information, vulnerability assessments, and disruption consequences in quantitative analyses through advanced modeling and simulation.
In collaboration with my LANL colleagues, we have developed a system dynamics model with the human component in mind- a critical element in determining the outcome of natural catastrophes- using the Hurrican Katrina evacuation as the control.
Model structure
We used a hybrid approach coupling a system dynamics model with an agent-based model. This approach allows us to capture the two different scales present in this multiscale problem—macroscopic and microscopic. The infrastructures and their interdependencies were modeled at a macroscopic level. The human behavioral component was modeled at a microscopic level using an agent-based simulation representing different social networks.
This behavioral model can be extended and adapted to many scenarios and domains where people behavior and mechanism of information diffusion and adaptation are involved.
