Leorey Marquez, Pawan Gamage, Dhirendra Singh, Vincent Lemiale, Trevor Dess, Peter Ashton, et al. (2023). SEEKER: A Web-Based Simulation Tool for Planning Community Evacuations. In V. L. Thomas J. Huggins (Ed.), Proceedings of the ISCRAM Asia Pacific Conference 2022 (pp. 8–24). Palmerston North, New Zealand: Massey Unversity.
Abstract: Bushfires cause widespread devastation in Australia, one of the most fire-prone countries on earth. Bushfire seasons are also becoming longer and outbreaks of severe bushfires are occurring more often. This creates the problem of having more people at risk in very diverse areas resulting in more difficult mass evacuations over time. The Barwon Otway region in Victoria’s Surf Coast Shire is one such area with evacuation challenges due to its limited routes in and out of coastal areas and its massive population surges during the tourist season and holiday periods. The increasing gravity of the bushfire threat to the region has brought about the Great Ocean Road Decision Support System (GOR-DSS) project, and the subsequent development of a disaster evacuation tool to support emergency management organisations assess evacuation and risk mitigation options. This paper describes the design and development of SEEKER (Simulations of Emergency Evacuations for Knowledge, Education and Response). The SEEKER tool adds another level of intelligence to the evacuation response by incorporating agent-based modelling and allows emergency management agencies to design and run evacuation scenarios and analyse the risk posed by the fire to the population and road network. Furthermore, SEEKER can be used to develop multiple evacuation scenarios to investigate and compare the effectiveness of each emergency evacuation plan. This paper also discusses the application of SEEKER in a case study, community engagement, and training.
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Carolyn Huston, Jennifer Davis, Petra Kuhnert, & Andrew Bolt. (2023). Creating Trusted Extensions to Existing Software Tools in Bushfire Consequence Estimation. In V. L. Thomas J. Huggins (Ed.), Proceedings of the ISCRAM Asia Pacific Conference 2022 (pp. 25–34). Palmerston North, New Zealand: Massey Unversity.
Abstract: Bushfire modelling has advanced with wildfire simulators such as Spark and Phoenix Rapidfire that can generate plausible fire dynamics and simulations that decision-makers can easily explore. With extreme weather impacting the Australian landscapes through the onset of droughts and heatwaves, it is becoming more important to make decisions rapidly from fire simulations. An element of this decision-making process is trust, in which the decision-maker feels empowered to make decisions from models of complex systems like fire. We propose a framework for decision-making that makes use of a fire emulator, a surrogate version of Spark, to facilitate faster exploration of wildfire predictions and their uncertainties under a changing climate. We discuss the advantages and next steps of an emulator model using the mechanisms and conditions framework, a powerful vocabulary and design framework that builds in trust to allow users of a technology to understand and accept the features of a system.
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Santiago Pantano Calderón, Claude Baron, Jean-Charles Chaudemar, Élise Vareilles, & Rob Vingerhoeds. (2022). Regarding the COVID-19 Crisis from a Systems Engineering Perspective. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 154–161). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: In the beginning of 2022, the world is still fighting the crisis caused by the COVID-19 o utbreak. The scientific community is still dedicating significant efforts to identify which are the better strategies to mitigate the pandemic and establish how and when to apply them. Modeling and simulation are a common method to replicate and foresee the behavior of the epidemic curve, but traditional analytical models are not capable to explain and reproduce the real evolution of the number of infections and deaths as they only concentrate in the epidemiological aspects of the virus. The COVID-19 crisis has an impact in all fundamental levels of society, and this is the reason why its modeling requires a global perspective and a holistic approach. Though the engineering scope is not common in the study of public health crises, this paper concludes that some engineering tools such as systems analysis and control theory may be the answer to build a high-fidelity model to support the decision-making facing the emergency.
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Yue Guan, Shifei Shen, & Hong Huang. (2015). Assessment of the radiation doses to the public from the cesium in oceans after Fukushima Nuclear Accident. In L. Palen, M. Buscher, T. Comes, & A. Hughes (Eds.), ISCRAM 2015 Conference Proceedings ? 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Kristiansand, Norway: University of Agder (UiA).
Abstract: A great number of radioactive cesium were released into sea water after Fukushima Accident. We modified the Regional Oceanic Modelling System (ROMS) to reproduce the dispersion process of the cesium in oceans. The simulated water concentration was in good agreement with observation. In order to explore the nuclear impact of these contaminant in ocean, we established a food web model to calculate the concentration in marine organisms and assess the internal dose rate to the public. The estimated internal dose rate is small compared with the recommended limit by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Then, we employed the Monte Carlo N Particle Transport Code (MCNP) to calculate the transfer coefficient. The external dose rate could be estimated by this coefficient and simulated water concentration.
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Quanlai Zhao, Guofeng Su, & Hongyong Yuan. (2015). Fast Marching Method Applied For Emergency Evacuation in High-rise Building Fire. In L. Palen, M. Buscher, T. Comes, & A. Hughes (Eds.), ISCRAM 2015 Conference Proceedings ? 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Kristiansand, Norway: University of Agder (UiA).
Abstract: In this paper, we use the fast marching method to solve the emergency evacuation in high-rise building fire. This method is a numerical method which is used to solve the Eikonal equation in rectangular grids. As we know, building fires are very common in the world. They have caused a great deal of personnel casualty and property losses. How to reduce the casualty and ensure the life safety of trapped persons and rescuers have become the most important problem of the fire department. We carry out fire experiment and FDS simulation to research the structure fire firstly. Second, we divide the construction into 0.4m*0.4m grid. This size is a person who occupied when he is standing. After that, we use interpolation method to analyze the experiment and FDS simulation data so that we can get the risk value of each grid. At last, we calculate the global potential energy field of the scene based on the fast marching method and obtain a safest path for the trapped persons. The safest path represents the fastest-risk-decline path. In the cause of fire rescue we can provide the safest path to the trapped persons through evacuation signals of the building in order to guide them to evacuate and self-rescue.
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