Framework for Modeling Mass Disasters

Abstract

This paper introduces a generic mass Disaster Modeling Framework (DMF) to support integrated sociophysical risk assessment and management of disasters. The DMF draws on the principles that disasters have many common features regardless of their instigating hazards and are the outcome of interaction between a hazard and society. The modular architecture of the DMF weakly couples three key applications: the Community Simulation Model (CSM), the Hazard Simulation Model (HSM), and the Evacuation Simulation Model (ESM). The CSM utilizes census, cadastral, and other data to construct an individual-based representation of the potentially impacted community. The CSM estimates people and built environment at risk at any given time of the day, week, and year. The CSM assessment along with the hazard simulation of the HSM feed into the ESM to simulate the progression of fatalities throughout the event. Dam failures, for which vivid and detailed accounts of human interaction with the incoming flood exist, served as case studies.