USING GIS AND EARTHQUAKE SCENARIOS FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE IN CASE OF A STRONG EARTHQUAKE. AN APPLICATION IN THE URBAN AREA OF THESSALONIKI, GREECE

The aim of this paper, which is part of the M.Sc Thesis of the first author, is an initial attempt for the assessment of the emergency response through the road network of the Urban Area of Thessaloniki (UAT) after a strong earthquake. The areas of the road network that are to become inaccessible either due to partial collapse of buildings or due to destruction of the road axes by rupture zones, are detected. The inaccessible parts are determined for the cases of three earthquake scenarios using the values of the Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA), which were calculated for about 6000 points over the UAT, as well as spatial overlay tools of a GIS. In the end, by applying network analysis and according to the situation of the network after the earthquake, the possibility of movement of the fire engines and ambulances was studied and least cost routes from ambulance stations to UAT hospitals were tracked

USING GIS AND EARTHQUAKE SCENARIOS FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE IN CASE OF A STRONG EARTHQUAKE. AN APPLICATION IN THE URBAN AREA OF THESSALONIKI, GREECE

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper, which is part of the M.Sc Thesis of the first author, is an initial attempt for the assessment of the emergency response through the road network of the Urban Area of Thessaloniki (UAT) after a strong earthquake. The areas of the road network that are to become inaccessible either due to partial collapse of buildings or due to destruction of the road axes by rupture zones, are detected. The inaccessible parts are determined for the cases of three earthquake scenarios using the values of the Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA), which were calculated for about 6000 points over the UAT, as well as spatial overlay tools of a GIS. In the end, by applying network analysis and according to the situation of the network after the earthquake, the possibility of movement of the fire engines and ambulances was studied and least cost routes from ambulance stations to UAT hospitals were tracked

Reporting Mental Health Symptoms: Breaking Down Barriers to Care with Virtual Human Interviewers

A common barrier to healthcare for psychiatric conditions is the stigma associated with these disorders. Perceived stigma prevents many from reporting their symptoms. Stigma is a particularly pervasive problem among military service members, preventing them from reporting symptoms of combat-related conditions like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, research shows (increased reporting by service members when anonymous assessments are used. For example, service members report more symptoms of PTSD when they anonymously answer the Post-Deployment Health Assessment (PDHA) symptom checklist compared to the official PDHA, which is identifiable and linked to their military records. To investigate the factors that influence reporting of psychological symptoms by service members, we used a transformative technology: automated virtual humans that interview people about their symptoms. Such virtual human interviewers allow simultaneous use of two techniques for eliciting disclosure that would otherwise be incompatible; they afford anonymity while also building rapport. We examined whether virtual human interviewers could increase disclosure of mental health symptoms among active-duty service members that just returned from a year-long deployment in Afghanistan. Service members reported more symptoms during a conversation with a virtual human interviewer than on the official PDHA. They also reported more to a virtual human interviewer than on an anonymized PDHA. A second, larger sample of active-duty and former service members found a similar effect that approached statistical significance. Because respondents in both studies shared more with virtual human interviewers than an anonymized PDHA—even though both conditions control for stigma and ramifications for service members’ military records—virtual human interviewers that build rapport may provide a superior option to encourage reporting

SimSensei Demonstration: A Perceptive Virtual Human Interviewer for Healthcare Applications

We present the SimSensei system, a fully automatic virtual agent that conducts interviews to assess indicators of psychological distress. We emphasize on the perception part of the system, a multimodal framework which captures and analyzes user state for both behavioral understanding and interactional purposes