Use of behavioral theories for the interpretation of human behavior in the Costa Concordia disaster

The Costa Concordia disaster represents one of the most dramatic ship evacuations of recent years. This thesis constitutes a case study of the Costa Concordia disaster, in an attempt to identify behaviors among the evacuees that may have contributed in reducing the effectiveness of the evacuation procedures. Publicly available material – such as reports from the media, survivor accounts and scientific investigations – was critically analyzed, and current behavioral models were used to interpret the behaviors identified

Disaster Preparedness Study

Is Jacksonville prepared for a man-made or natural disaster? With the numerous risks of encountering disaster in Jacksonville due to its geography, weather patterns, transportation routes, and military facilities, how can disaster preparedness here be improved? The term disaster in this study refers to the occurrence or imminent threat of widespread or severe damage, injury, or loss of life and/or property resulting from any natural or man made cause. This includes but is not limited to, enemy attack, sabotage or other hostile military or paramilitary action, fire, flood, earthquake, wind storm, wave action, epidemic, air contamination, blight, drought, infestation, explosion, or accident involving radiation byproducts. A disaster creates a situation in which the day-to-day patterns of life are suddenly disrupted and numbers of people are plunged into helplessness and distress. The scope of the study includes a review and analysis of: Past disasters and the potential for future disasters. Roles of public and private agencies responsible for responding to disasters. Methods for communicating among agencies and with the population before, during, and after disasters. • Preparedness programs in similar cities. PALMM

Multi-scale Models for Transportation Systems Under Emergency Conditions

The purpose of this study is to investigate human behavior in emergencies. More specifically, agent-based simulation and social force models were developed to examine the impact of various human and environmental factors on the efficiency of the evacuation process, through a series of case studies. The independent variables of the case studies include the number of exits, the number of passengers, the evacuation policies, and instructions, as well as the queue configuration and wall separators. The results revealed the location of the exits, number of exits, evacuation strategies, and group behaviors all significantly impact the total time of the evacuation. For the queue configuration, short aisles lower infection spread when rope separators were used. The findings provide new insights in designing layout, planning, practice, and training strategies for improving the effectiveness of the pedestrian evacuation process under emergency

An emergency vehicles allocation model for major industrial disasters

One of the main issues in the event of a major industrial disaster (fire, explosion or toxic gas dispersion) is to efficacy manage emergencies by considering both medical and logistics issues. From a logistics point of view the purpose of this work is to correctly address critical patients from the emergency site to the most suitable hospitals. A Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) Model is proposed, able to determine the optimal number and allocation of emergency vehicles involved in relief operations, in order to maximize the number of successfully treated injured patients. Moreover, a vehicles reallocation strategy has been developed which takes into account the evolution of the patients health conditions. Alternative scenarios have been tested considering a dynamic version of the Emergency Vehicles Allocation Problem, in which patient health conditions evolves during the rescue process. A company located in Italy has been considered as case-study in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology

Applying the lessons of the attack on the World Trade Center, 11th September 2001, to the design and use of interactive evacuation simulations

The collapse of buildings, such as terminal 2E at Paris' Charles de Gaule Airport, and of fires, such as the Rhode Island, Station Night Club tragedy, has focused public attention on the safety of large public buildings. Initiatives in the United States and in Europe have led to the development of interactive simulators that model evacuation from these buildings. The tools avoid some of the ethical and legal problems from simulating evacuations; many people were injured during the 1993 evacuation of the World Trade Center (WTC) complex. They also use many concepts that originate within the CHI communities. For instance, some simulators use simple task models to represent the occupants' goal structures as they search for an available exit. However, the recent release of the report from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the '9/11 commission') has posed serious questions about the design and use of this particular class of interactive systems. This paper argues that simulation research needs to draw on insights from the CHI communities in order to meet some the challenges identified by the 9/11 commission

Capacity Of Firefighters Fire Fighting Officers In The Implementation Of The Sister Village Program

Fire is one of the dangers that can threaten cities that have dense residential. DKI Jakarta as the capital city of the country with many dense residential areas with a high level of fire risk, this is proven from the data of 948 fires occurred from 2011, they were1008 in 2012, 486 in 2013, 486 in 2014 696, 1582 in 2015 and in 2016 there were 1139 fires. The trigger of fires in dense residential areas was the lack of resilience in handling the fire disasters, resilience here refers to reducing the vulnerability that becomes a potential fire hazard in residential areas. Community involvement in fire disaster risk reduction is very important, this should be with the capacity of firefighters to be able to initiate the community to be involved in fire disaster risk reduction efforts. This research will analyze the capacity of firefighters in implementing the Sister Village program, identify the capacity of implementing the Sister Village program that was seen from (i) the capacity of firefighters in initiating communities to play a role in efforts to reduce the risk of fire disasters, (ii) Implementation of the Sister Village Program in fire disaster risk reduction efforts, (iii) Community involvement in fire disaster risk reduction efforts in DKI Jakarta. In doing research the capacity of firefighters in the application of the Sister Village Program as an effort to reduce the risk of fire disasters used descriptive qualitative research methods

Lessons from the evacuation of the World Trade Center, Sept 11th 2001 for the future development of computer simulations

This paper provides an overview of the state of the art in evacuation simulations. These interactive computer based tools have been developed to help the owners and designers of large public buildings to assess the risks that occupants might face during emergency egress. The development of the Glasgow Evacuation Simulator is used to illustrate the existing generation of tools. This system uses Monte Carlo techniques to control individual and group movements during an evacuation. The end-user can interactively open and block emergency exits at any point. It is also possible to alter the priorities that individuals associate with particular exit routes. A final benefit is that the tool can derive evacuation simulations directly from existing architects models; this reduces the cost of simulations and creates a more prominent role for these tools in the iterative development of large-scale public buildings. Empirical studies have been used to validate the GES system as a tool to support evacuation training. The development of these tools has been informed by numerous human factors studies and by recent accident investigations. For example, the 2003 fire in the Station nightclub in Rhode Island illustrated the way in which most building occupants retrace their steps to an entrance even when there are alternate fire exits. The second half of this paper uses this introduction to criticise the existing state of the art in evacuation simulations. These criticisms are based on a detailed study of the recent findings from the 9/11 Commission (2004). Ten different lessons are identified. Some relate to the need to better understand the role of building management and security systems in controlling egress from public buildings. Others relate to the human factors involved in coordinating distributed groups of emergency personnel who may be physically exhausted by the demands of an evacuation. Arguably the most important findings centre on the need to model the ingress and egress of emergency personnel from these structures. The previous focus of nearly all-existing simulation tools has been on the evacuation of building occupants rather than on the safety of first responders1