Responding to terrorist attacks and natural disasters: a case study using simulation

The heightened threat of terrorism has caused governments worldwide to reconsider their plans for responding in the immediate aftermath to large-scale catastrophic incidents. This paper discusses the use of discrete event simulation modeling to understand how a fire service might position its resources before an attack takes place, to best respond to a combination of different attacks at different locations if they happen. Two models are built for this purpose. The first model deals with mass decontamination of a population following biological or chemical attack - aiming to study resource requirements (vehicles, equipment and manpower) necessary to meet performance targets. The second model deals with the allocation of resources across regions - aiming to study cover level and response times, analyzing different allocations of resources, both centralized and decentralized. Contributions to theory and practice are outlined.

[1]  Thomas F. Brady.  Public health: emergency management: capability analysis of critical incident response , 2003, WSC '03.

[2]  T. F. Brady.  Emergency management: capability analysis of critical incident response , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 Winter Simulation Conference, 2003..

[3]  Alan Cowdale.  Traffic and road planning simulation: simulation modelling in support of emergency fire-fighting in Norfolk , 2003, WSC '03.

[4]  Andrew Greasley.  Simulation Modelling for Business , 2003 .

[5]  Charles R. McLean,et al.  A framework for modeling and simulation for emergency response , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 Winter Simulation Conference, 2003..

[6]  C. McLean,et al.  A framework for modeling and simulation for emergency response , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 Winter Simulation Conference, 2003..

[7]  A. Mushlin,et al.  Modeling the Public Health Response to Bioterrorism: Using Discrete Event Simulation to Design Antibiotic Distribution Centers , 2002, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[8]  K. Farahmand,et al.  Application Of Simulation Modeling To Emergency Population Evacuation , 1997, Winter Simulation Conference Proceedings,.