The Chaos of Katrina: A Nonlinear Analysis of Federal Logistics Support during Hurricane Katrina Relief Operations

This thesis presents a case study of federal logistics support during Hurricane Katrina disaster relief operations. Data from federal contracts covering the first 10 weeks of Katrina are used to measure federal logistics activity. The study investigates whether chaos theory, part of complexity science, can extract information from Katrina contracting data to help managers make better logistics decisions during disaster relief operations. The study uses three analytical techniques: embedding, fitting the data to a logistic equation, and plotting the limit-cycle. Embedding and fitting a logistic equation to the data were used to test for deterministic chaos. The logistic equation and two versions of the limit-cycle model developed by Priesmeyer, Baik, and Cole were also tested as potential management tools. The study found that deterministic chaos was present during the first week of disaster relief, but that results for subsequent weeks were inconclusive, possibly due to internal changes to the relief dynamics. The thesis concludes that initial conditions and early actions will have a significant affect on disaster relief outcomes. Furthermore, many events that appear to be uncontrollable and random may actually be controllable. Therefore, managers play a critical role in preparing for and providing guidance in the early stages of disaster relief

Brownian motion and diffusion: from stochastic processes to chaos and beyond

One century after Einstein's work, Brownian Motion still remains both a fundamental open issue and a continous source of inspiration for many areas of natural sciences. We first present a discussion about stochastic and deterministic approaches proposed in the literature to model the Brownian Motion and more general diffusive behaviours. Then, we focus on the problems concerning the determination of the microscopic nature of diffusion by means of data analysis. Finally, we discuss the general conditions required for the onset of large scale diffusive motion.Comment: RevTeX-4, 11 pages, 5 ps-figures. Chaos special issue "100 Years of Brownian Motion