Abstracts
D. Alexander
Integrated Emergency Response: A Resilience Perspective
This paper considers the problem of how to integrate the diverse components
of emergency rescue and management services into a coherent civil protection
service. Recently, the term "resilience" has gained much currency and has
begun to assume the trappings of a philosophy of emergency preparedness.
First, the paper reviews the meaning of resilience and its guiding principles.
Secondly, models are presented that seek to interpret the complexity of the
organisation of civil protection and reduce it to manageable proportions.
The models deal with functional, geographical and administrative divisions,
with support functions and command functions, and with parallel civil
protection and civil defence activities. Attention is focused on the impact
of the information and communications technology revolution on the management
of civilian emergencies. One of the effects has been to flatten the chain
of command and redirect the participating forces towards new forms of
collaboration that are less hierarchical than in the past. Thirdly, the
paper considers the role of education and training in creating the conditions
for resiliency. Finally, it tackles the question of how to create a sustainable
civil protection system. Sustainability requires the support of the beneficiaries
of civil protection and the integration of services into the normal, workaday
management of community functions. In conclusion, resilience is intimately
linked to adaptability and flexibility in emergency management, which
require that close attention be devoted to the design and integration of services.
M. Marsili
Volatility and the emergence of socio-economic networks
The very notion of networks in socio-economic systems relies on the
fact that both the agents composing it and their relationships are
stable to some degree. In reality both change in time as a result of a
large variety of (often unobservable) factors -- which we call
volatility.
For a given type of socio-economic interaction among agents, dense
networks can exist only if volatility is not strong enough. We show,
in simple stylized models of evolving networks, that the transition to
a dense network is sharp and discontinuous when volatility affects
mainly the links, whereas it turns continuous when volatility affects
mostly nodes (high agents' turnover).
References:
[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.0348
[2] http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0604036
J. Portugali
Extreme events in complex urban systems:
Theoretical, methodological and practical challenges
The issue of extreme events (ExEv) are currently capturing the center
of public discourse. One of the reasons for this is urbanization: The
last century has witnessed the fastest demographic and urban growth in
human history: for the first time more than 50% of the world population
lives in cities. As a result, cities are becoming the places most
vulnerable to ExEv of all kinds and the effect of ExEv on urban areas
is becoming more disastrous than ever (the tsunami in South-East Asia,
September 11, in N.Y, hurricane Katrina in New Orleans etc.). There are
several interrelated challenges in this new reality among them, firstly,
the challenge of developing a theoretical framework for the study of
ExEv in cities. Secondly, the challenge of developing simulation models.
Thirdly, the challenge of developing practical technologies that apply
the theory and methodology to the state-of-the-art technologies. In this
talk I'll examine complexity theory as a theoretical framework for ExEv,
its corresponding simulation models as urban simulation models and a
configuration of USM, GIS and VR as decision and planning support systems
V. Latora
The multiple centrality assessment
We present a new method, named Multiple Centrality Assessment (MCA), for
mapping centrality in urban networks. MCA makes it possible to ascertain
how each street is structurally central in a city according to several
different notions of centrality (namely closeness, betweenness, straightness
and information), as well as different scales of being
central. Spatial distributions of centrality allow an extended
comprehension of the city structure, nicely capturing the skeleton of most
central routes and sub-areas, and are able to characterize different
classes of cities, such as planned cities and self-organized cities.
We also investigate how much higher street centrality statistically
determines a higher presence of activities (shops and services).
Results offer evidence-based foundations of a high level of correlation
between the centrality of streets, especially betweenness centrality,
and several other urban dynamics like traffic flows and the location of
shops and services as well as that of workplaces.
These results support the predictive capability of the MCA model as a tool
for sustainable urban design. We finally discuss a professional application
of the MCA to the restoration of the network of paths and open spaces
in the Parma (IT) University Campus.
S. Hallerberg (Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems) and H. Kantz
Influence of the event magnitude on the predictability
of an extreme event
We investigate the predictability of extreme events in time series. The focus of
this work is to understand under which circumstances large events are better
predictable than smaller events. Therefore we use a simple prediction algorithm
based on precursory structures which are identified using the maximum likelihood
principle. Using the receiver operator characteristic curve as a measure for the
quality of predictions we find that the dependence on the event size is closely
linked to the probability distribution function of the underlying stochastic process.
We evaluate this dependence on the probability distribution function analytically
and numerically. If we assume that the optimal precursory structures are used to
make the predictions, we find that large increments are better predictable if the
underlying stochastic process has a Gaussian probability distribution function,
whereas larger increments are harder to predict if the underlying probability
distribution function has a power-law tail. In the case of an exponential
distribution function we find no significant dependence on the event size.
Furthermore we compare these results with predictions of increments in correlated
data, namely, velocity increments of a free jet flow. The velocity increments in
the free jet flow are in dependence on the time scale either asymptotically Gaussian
or asymptotically exponential distributed. The numerical results for predictions
within free jet data are in good agreement with the previous analytical considerations
for random numbers.
M. Galeotti, A. Antoci (University of Sassari)
Innovative financial instruments for
environmental protection
We present two simplified models of financial activities aimed at implementing
and supporting environmental protection policies.
These innovative financial instruments should be issued with assistance of the
Public Administration (PA), but mainly fuelled by the interest of certain economic
agents: in one case, visitors and firms operating in a tourist region R; in the
other case, citizens and visitors utilizing activities and services in the center
of a city C (briefly, City users).
The complex strategic interactions among the economic agents and among them and
the PA are modeled through a game theoretic approach and their dynamics are
(partially) analyzed.
P. Lio'
How can we respond quickly to urban challenges such as epidemics and
communications breakdown?
This talk is divided in two sections aiming at investigating appropriate
responses to epidemiogical and communications breakage challenges and at
stressing the relevant open problems. First, using actual census, family
and age structure, land-use and population-mobility data, we describe a
stochastic cellular automata on a social contact network to study the
propagation of infuenza epidemics in the UK. We considered large city
and country village cases as examples of different mobility and density.
In particular, we address age dependency and obtain the contact networks
through the analysis of location co-presence. We analyze infection
propensities as well as vaccination techniques. The results indicate the
relative merits of different vaccination strategies combined with early
detection without resorting to mass vaccination of a population.
Recent data and model on avian flu will also be shown.
In the second part, we describe our recent work on modeling mobility with
particular focus on directional antennas and on trace analysis. The use
of directional antennas is receiving lot of attention due to their low
radio leakage and lower power consumption and at the same time providing
high throughput. These characteristics become very important during
communication emergencies. Finally trace analysis provides invaluable
insights into actual mobility patterns and communication network users.
Data from various sources will be presented.
