Computational Disaster Management

Abstract

The frequency and intensity of natural disasters have significantly increased over the past decades and this trend is predicted to continue. Natural disasters have dramatic impacts on human lives and on the socio-economic welfare of entire regions. They are identified as one of the major risks of the East Asia and Pacific region, which represents 85 percents of all people affected since 2007. Moreover, this exposure will likely double by 2050 due to rapid urbanization and climate change. Dramatic events such as Hurricane Katrina and the Tohoku tsunami have also emphasized the strong need for optimization tools in preparing, mitigating, responding, and recovering from disasters, complementing the role of situational awareness that had been the focus in the past. This talk presents some of the progress accomplished in the last 5 years and deployed to assist the response to hurricanes such as Irene and Sandy. It describes the computational challenges ahead in optimization, simulation, and the modeling of complex inter-dependent infrastructures, and sketches the disaster management platform built at NICTA.