Capabilities:

• Risk Analysis
• Risk Management
• Economics

A major focus of CREATE is to develop tools that can be used to minimize loss of life and property damage in the aftermath of catastrophic terrorist events. This will be accomplished by enhancing the abilities of response agencies to optimally allocate and deploy their resources, both in planning for events and in executing response plans in the hours and days following events. CREATE's focus in year one is on developing GIS based tools for personnel and equipment deployment and storage and allocation of inventoried items (e.g., medicines), as well as for training emergency response commanders.

• Personnel and Equipment Deployment (Larson, Tien) We will develop a family of analytical planning models that incorporate personnel and equipment resource allocations during the three-wave response to a major unexpected event. The models will be modular and linked, designed to allow alternative scenarios to be examined. The models will allow the users to examine the consequences of alternatives related to: numbers and initial locations of personnel, by type; transportation options available to each level of responder, yielding response times; estimates of numbers of seriously injured and deceased, by time since event occurred; level of usability of needed technologies under alternative assumptions of infrastructure damage (e.g., availability of electricity, electronic communications, visual communications, etc.), and other factors as determined by interviews with national leaders representing each level of responder. Additional features will be added to model deployment of inventoried resources used in medical treatment and clean-up, and modeling medical services in hospitals and clinics. A key feature of the work will be development of rigorous analytical models of random events, including the use of robust optimization methods to obtain solutions to these uncertain models. Through use of analytical modeling techniques, the team will also be able to solve complex problems in emergency response without resorting to time-consuming simulation techniques, thus making it simpler to plan, evaluate and estimate consequences from desktop computers. A working prototype will be delivered at the end of Year 1.

   

• Location, Amount and Assignment of Inventories (Dessouky, Hall, Ordonez) A key ingredient in an effective response to an emergency is the prompt availability of necessary supplies, such as vaccines, at emergency sites. We will develop modeling tools for optimizing the location and supply levels for emergency supplies, and develop tools for optimally dispersing supplies once an emergency has occurred. The effort will include research on five questions: (1) trade-off models to evaluate competing objectives in the event that all demands cannot be immediately satisfied, (2) mortality and morbidity estimates as a function of response times, (3) incorporating highly stochastic demand within inventory models, (4) uncertainty in network travel times in the event of terrorist attacks, and (5) state of readiness to respond to terrorist attacks. The models for distribution of inventoried items will be integrated into a GIS system to enable its use by authorities to plan for emergency response.

   

• Detailed Simulation and Training (Tambe, Neumann, McLeod) Agent-based simulations will model a response to terrorist attacks. The simulated attack will occur within the city of Los Angeles, and following this attack, simulated intelligent agents in the form of fire engines, ambulances and police cars will rescue civilians, extinguish fires, clear up blocked roads, etc. A human "fire-chief" will interact with the agents, providing them guidance and input. This simulation will be based on the "RoboCup-Rescue" platform, which will be extended to represent new locations and incident types. We will task the agents in the form of ambulances, fire engines and other response units to rescue civilians. Building from the strengths of the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), incidents will be visualized within a 3D visual model of an urban environment (Figure 3). The user will be able to navigate at will in the evolving environment, choosing viewpoints that best allow them to understand the situation. The resulting system will be a prototype data display framework in the guise of a navigable realistic 3D environment. The user will be able to see an overview of the environment as it updates, as well as experience the localized and incomplete picture obtained from an "in the street" viewpoint.