Discovering best practices in emergency response with combined physical and organizational simulation

Simulations that incorporate both physical (hard) as well as psycho-social human behaviours (soft) are expected to improve situational awareness during critical events, yet are not readily available. Because of the complex nature of emergency response and, in particular, because of the potential for unforeseen interdependencies in the physical environment, it is difficult to objectively assess the effectiveness of organizational response practices. To overcome this challenge, both the reality of the physical environment and the impact of human organizations must be represented explicitly. We combine two existing simulators to offer a holistic picture that integrates the “hard” and “soft” factors. We discuss the interaction of these simulators for both “as-is” and “what-if” scenarios related to an actual case study. It is expected that this integrated simulation approach will help to discover best practices and policies that would improve the effectiveness of operations for real-world organizations in disaster situations.