A simulation tool for crisis management and pre-disaster planning

Natural and anthropic disasters can affect every city and urban area. Urbanists, engineers and decision makers must work towards reducing risks to the population in case a disaster occurs. This paper proposes a new methodology based on algorithmically calculated risk scenarios and on human behavioral simulation models that aims to evaluate and eventually improve crisis management and pre-disaster planning at the urban level The approach is based on GAMA, an agent-oriented simulation tool which allows the formulation of integrated models utilizing multiple modeling paradigms, the exploration of parameter space, the calibration of several models, and the performance of virtual experiments through the integration of vector and raster geographic data. The objective of the proposed methodology is to devise a platform that can be used to: i) validate, using simulation, the qualities of the urban structures and characteristics of city components with respect to their capacity to respond to a catastrophic event, and ii) more importantly, to define new urban design strategies oriented toward safety with the final goal of improving the resilience of our cities. The article provides the preliminary findings from a case study on which the approach under development was applied.