ESRC-COMPLEXITY SEMINAR SERIES
SEMINAR 6: Post 7/7 and 9/11: What lessons have been learnt on evacuating, following a major disaster? What can state of the art modelling, simulations and a complexity theory approach contribute to policy?
INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME BY PROF. EVE MITLETON-KELLY
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INTRODUCTION
Seminar flyer
Speaker abstract and bios
The seminar aims to bring together policy makers, first responders and academics. Disasters happen, but can fatalities be reduced through the use of technology and better information to enable evacuees to make life-saving decisions? We cannot set up experiments with real disasters, but we can simulate them on a computer to study evacuation dynamics. The seminar speakers will discuss how first responders deal with such emergencies in practice and how academics model and simulate these disasters. Can these state of the art models help save lives? How can a complexity theory approach help policy makers?
This ESRC Complexity seminar is held in conjunction with the FP7 European project SOCIONICAL.
SOCIONICAL is using complexity theory to model and simulate evacuation dynamics after a major disaster such as the 7 July 2005 London underground bombings; this is the emergency stream of work which is also studying how essential information can be disseminated during a disaster to aid the evacuation and reduce fatalities. One technology being tested is the use of ambient intelligent computing devices (e.g.mobile phones) to provide the necessary information, on what is happening, which are the clear exits and which the safest paths; and how this information may affect the decisions of survivors. The second stream of work is focusing on transport and is studying new ‘intelligent’ devices in cars that provide drivers with information about the state of traffic and how other drivers are behaving. The challenge is integrating the two streams of evacuation and traffic, and developing new modelling techniques based on complexity theory.