Understanding Mass Killing in America: A System Dynamics Approach

This study explores the replication effect of mass killings across the United States. Often news outlets sensationalize emotional stories, such as mass killings, because they increase readership. Increased readership perpetuates the spread of the ideation to commit a mass killing through imitation, with each new incident having the possibility to spark several more throughout the country through increased exposure. This study places greatest focus on the imitation and does not analyze feedback mechanisms that affect other influences of violence. System dynamics modeling provides the framework for examining imitation incidents as an effect of increased exposure via the media

Simulating Army Rail Yard Operations at the Port of Bremerhaven

To maintain the United States military’s capability to deploy rapidly across the globe, logistical planning tools, simulations, and models enhance leaders’ decision making abilities. This research develops a discrete event model designed to simulate military operations within a railyard in order to support the Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) Planning Logistics Analysis Network System (PLANS). The research team chose the Port of Bremerhaven, Germany as a case study due to its relevance to current military operations, granting us access to timely data and stakeholders with recent operational experience. The discrete event simulation (DES) utilizes stochastic processes and multiple layouts in order to analyze the amount of time it takes to move varying amounts of cargo and vehicles and identify potential bottlenecks in the operation