Modeling Society Reacting to a Nuclear Weapon of Mass Destruction Event

Over the last couple of years we have been working on generating synthetic human populations with realistic social networks with respect to the New York mega-city and surrounding region. This is being done for a variety of modeling applications such as the spread of a disease or exploring peoples reactions to disasters (which was a topic of a recent post on Computational Social Science of Disasters).

To this end, at the upcoming International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and; Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (or SBP-BRiMS for short) we have a short working paper outlining some of our initial efforts to how people might react following a Nuclear Weapon of Mass Destruction (NWMD) event. In the paper we show some preliminary simulation results relating on  how we are able to simulate basic commuting patterns and initial movement away from the affected area after the NWMD event (like those in the movies below). By using a synthetic population we are able to create an artificial world populated by agents with sufficient heterogeneity to create realistic movement patterns and the social networks which play a vital role in disaster situations. If you want to know more about this work, feel free to read the abstract below or read the paper. 

Abstract:

Individual connections between human beings often dictate where people go and how they behave, yet their representation through social networks are rarely used as measures of human behavior in agent-based models. Social networks are increasingly used for study of human behavior in disasters, and empirical work has shown that human beings prioritize the safety of themselves and loved ones (i.e., households) before helping neighbors and coworkers. Based on this assumption we have created a set of heuristics for modeling how agents behave in an emergency event and how the individual behavior aggregates into a variety of patterns of life. In this paper will present briefly our agent-based model being used to characterize the population’s reaction to a Nuclear Weapon of Mass Destruction (NWMD) event in the New York City region. Agents are modeled commuting on work-day schedules before the explosion of a small (10Kt) nuclear device. After the explosion, agents respond to signals in their environment and make decisions based on prioritization of safety for themselves and those in their networks. The model methodology demonstrates how social networks can be integrated into an agent-based model and act as a basis for decision-making, and preliminary simulations show how agents potentially respond to a NWMD event with measurable changes in location and network formations over space and time. 

Keywords: Agent-Based Model, Human Behavior, Social Networks, Emergency, Disaster Response, Nuclear Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Various patterns of commuting behavior representing daily routines of the individual agents.

Full Reference:

Burger, A. G., Kennedy, W.G., Crooks, A.T., Jiang, N. and Guillen-Piazza, D. (2019), Modeling Society Reacting to a Nuclear Weapon of Mass Destruction Event, 2019 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation, Washington DC. (pdf)