EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT IN CHINA: A SURVEY OF SYSTEM, AGENT-BASED MODELING, AND RECOMMENDATION

Disasters, whether natural or man-made, hinder the security and stability of societies worldwide. People in disaster prone areas live in constant fear, not knowing when and where disasters will strike. Therefore, it is critical to design emergency management systems and contingency plans to prepare for the worst. While a great number of plans have been proposed around the globe, the geographical properties and cultural differences between disaster sites significantly affect their efficiencies. This paper surveys existing literature on emergency management in China and summarizes different evacuation models, in particular, agent-based models and other models. We identify four major issues in the emergency management system in China and provide recommendations and guidelines for addressing these issues. To exemplify the implementation of these recommendations, we provide an example based on a statistical model and an agent-based simulation model to substantiate the development of the emergency management system in China.

Since the introduction of pavement management systems (PMS) in China in 1984, there has been significant progress in research and development of such systems. This paper reviews the development of pavement management systems in China. Three main aspects are presented: the development of China PMS (CPMS) by the China Highway Institute, university-based work on PMS, and integration of facility management systems and integration of PMS with geographical information systems based applications. Significant contributions by researchers at Tongji University on PMS in the past 20 years are also discussed. The paper presents current problems in the full implementation of PMS, and further development in the future in China. Based on the understanding of the application of the Chinese PMS and the efforts of various highways departments, the authors provide some recommendations to help tackle real-world problems. It is estimated that full implementation of PMS in the whole country will take another 5–10 years.

Since the introduction of pavement management systems (PMS) in China in 1984, there has been significant progress in research and development of such systems. This paper reviews the development of pavement management systems in China. Three main aspects are presented: the development of China PMS (CPMS) by the China Highway Institute, university-based work on PMS, and integration of facility management systems and integration of PMS with geographical information systems based applications. Significant contributions by researchers at Tongji University on PMS in the past 20 years are also discussed. The paper presents current problems in the full implementation of PMS, and further development in the future in China. Based on the understanding of the application of the Chinese PMS and the efforts of various highways departments, the authors provide some recommendations to help tackle real-world problems. It is estimated that full implementation of PMS in the whole country will take another 5–10 years.

An emergency management system is an important part of the current national governance system. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, China’s emergency management agencies have been reformed many times, and the emergency management system has been significantly improved in continuous development. China’s emergency management can be divided into four stages from 1949 to now, forming three generations of the emergency management system. This paper introduces the organizational characteristics of China’s emergency management in four stages, expounds on the main characteristics of the three generations of the emergency management system, and puts forward some key points of improving China’s emergency management system.

Emergency management system has become more and more important. Through introducing the purpose and meaning of emergency management assessment system in China, and constructing the framework of emergency management assessment system. In order to put forward the assessment methods of emergency management system. By using the assessment method to quantify the emergency management system, and point out the emergency ability. Finally, emergency management assessment system provides reference for emergency management system.

BackgroundAt the end of 2019, the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) severely damaged and endangered people’s lives. The public health emergency management system in China has played an essential role in handling the response to the outbreak, which has been appreciated by the World Health Organization and some countries. Hence, it is necessary to conduct an overall analysis of the development of the health emergency management system in China. This can provide a reference for scholars to aid in understanding the current situation and to reveal new research topics.MethodsWe collected 2247 international articles from the Web of Science database and 959 Chinese articles from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database. Bibliometric and mapping knowledge domain analysis methods were used in this study for temporal distribution analysis, cooperation network analysis, and co-word network analysis.ResultsThe first international article in this field was published in 1991, while the first Chinese article was published in 2005. The research institutions producing these studies mainly existed in universities and health organizations. Developed countries and European countries published the most articles overall, while eastern China published the most articles within China. There were 52 burst words for international articles published from 1999–2018 and 18 burst words for Chinese articles published from 2003–2018. International top-ranked articles according to the number of citations appeared in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2014, 2015, and 2016, while the corresponding Chinese articles appeared in 2003, 2004, 2009, and 2011.ConclusionsThere are differences in the regional and economic distribution of international and Chinese cooperation networks. International research is often related to timely issues mainly by focusing on emergency preparedness and monitoring of public health events, while China has focused on public health emergencies and their disposition. International research began on terrorism and bioterrorism, followed by disaster planning and emergency preparedness, epidemics, and infectious diseases. China considered severe acute respiratory syndrome as the starting research background and the legal system construction as the research starting point, which was followed by the mechanism, structure, system, and training abroad for public health emergency management.

There are numerous biological scenarios in which populations of cells migrate in crowded environments. Typical examples include wound healing, cancer growth, and embryo development. In these crowded environments cells are able to interact with each other in a variety of ways. These include excluded-volume interactions, adhesion, repulsion, cell signaling, pushing, and pulling. One popular way to understand the behavior of a group of interacting cells is through an agent-based mathematical model. A typical aim of modellers using such representations is to elucidate how the microscopic interactions at the cell-level impact on the macroscopic behavior of the population. At the very least, such models typically incorporate volume-exclusion. The more complex cell-cell interactions listed above have also been incorporated into such models; all apart from cell-cell pulling. In this paper we consider this under-represented cell-cell interaction, in which an active cell is able to "pull" a nearby neighbor as it moves. We incorporate a variety of potential cell-cell pulling mechanisms into on- and off-lattice agent-based volume exclusion models of cell movement. For each of these agent-based models we derive a continuum partial differential equation which describes the evolution of the cells at a population level. We study the agreement between the agent-based models and the continuum, population-based models and compare and contrast a range of agent-based models (accounting for the different pulling mechanisms) with each other. We find generally good agreement between the agent-based models and the corresponding continuum models that worsens as the agent-based models become more complex. Interestingly, we observe that the partial differential equations that we derive differ significantly, depending on whether they were derived from on- or off-lattice agent-based models of pulling. This hints that it is important to employ the appropriate agent-based model when representing pulling cell-cell interactions.

Disaster policy and emergency management reforms in China: From Wenchuan earthquake to Jiuzhaigou earthquake

Abstract. Emergency management becomes more challenging in international crisis episodes because of cultural, semantic and linguistic differences between all stakeholders, especially first responders. Misunderstandings between first responders makes decision making slower and more difficult. However, spread and development of networks and IT-based emergency management systems (EMSs) have improved emergency responses, which have become more coordinated. Despite improvements made in recent years, EMSs have not still solved problems related to cultural, semantic and linguistic differences which are the real cause of slower decision making. In addition, from a technical perspective, the consolidation of current EMSs and the different formats used to exchange information offers another problem to be solved in any solution proposed for information interoperability between heterogeneous EMSs in different contexts. To overcome these problems, we present a software solution based on semantic and mediation technologies. EMERGency ELements (EMERGEL) (Fundacion CTIC and AntwortING Ingenieurbüro PartG, 2013), a common and modular ontology shared by all the stakeholders, has been defined. It offers the best solution to gather all stakeholders' knowledge in a unique and flexible data model, taking into account different countries' cultural and linguistic issues. To deal with the diversity of data protocols and formats, we have designed a service-oriented architecture for data interoperability (named DISASTER: Data Interoperability Solution At STakeholders Emergency Reaction) providing a flexible extensible solution to solve the mediation issues. Web services have been adopted as specific technology to implement this paradigm that has the most significant academic and industrial visibility and attraction. Contributions of this work have been validated through the design and development of a cross-border realistic prototype scenario, actively involving both emergency managers and emergency-first responders: the Netherlands–Germany border fire.

In this paper, we describe what we believe to be the simplest agent-based model. More specifically we define the class of the simplest agent-based simulation model formulations, referred to as SABM. We describe the nine essential elements of agent-based simulation models in the class SABM and give an example of such a model. We find that the simplest ABM formulation provides a basis for a transparent, compact and elegant description of agent-based modeling. The design illustrates the essential characteristics of agent-based modelling as a field of research and application and facilitates the explanation of agent-based modeling. We hope that the simplest formulation demystifies agent-based modeling for those within the simulation community, as well as those new to the field such as researchers from other disciplines and application communities.

The establishment of the environmental management system in the financial sector can be effectively promoted through the introduction of the environmental protection concept and its implementation by the financial sector. The impact of a sustainable development system on the sector is analyzed in this article from three aspects: environmental risk assessment, financing support for environmental protection projects, and financial services to environmentally friendly corporations and individuals. Influential factors on the development of the environmental management system in China’s financial sector are discussed from the perspective of various entities such as financial institutions, financial regulation authorities, environmental protection departments, corporations, and the public. It is pointed out that China’s financial sector is now in the transitional phase from a defensive attitude to a preventive attitude. Strengthening governmental guidance, the supervision of regulators as well as public awareness of environmental protection should be used to enhance the initiative in the development of the environmental management system in the Chinese financial sector.

Since the SARS crisis in 2003, institutionalized emergency management systems have been established in each government level for improving inter‐organizational collaboration in China. Major accidents require participation of public organizations affiliated with multiple government levels, and the lack of collaboration and coordination among the involved organizations within the critical time constraints during the response process is an existing problem. In this research, a case study of examining the intergovernmental and cross‐sectoral collaboration for responding to a well‐known oil pipeline explosion accident in China by a complex network method is conducted. The aim is to obtain managerial insights in improving the existing emergency management system in a centralized political‐administrative context, such as China. A mixed method of data collection is applied to identify the participating organizations and to determine the interaction spanning organizational boundaries in both hierarchical and horizontal dimensions. An emergency response network is built and visualized for representing intergovernmental and interorganizational collaboration during the response process of the major accident by social network analysis (SNA) tools. The SNA indicators are used to measure quantitatively the network structure at the levels of the whole network, subnetwork, and node. The obstacles of achieving intergovernmental collaboration are found, and managerial suggestions for improving the existing emergency management system are provided. This research indicates that the Chinese government should pay attention to establishing and sustaining partnerships with private and nonprofit organizations and conduct a blend of hierarchical, market, and network principles in fostering collaboration for addressing major accidents. The public organizations in the local government level are shown to be more active than other participators in coordinating their response operations, and their capability should be emphasized for improvement. Additionally, the interactive relationships among specific emergency function groups and between the affected communities and organizations performing emergency command and coordination function should be strengthened.

Preliminary Exploration on China Public Security Management System

Experts play important role in the governance system for public emergencies. Different situational and institutional environments across different stages and hazards types in emergency management system shaped complicated interfaces between science and policy, understanding such dynamics is critical for the development of the expert participation regime. This study adopted a large language model (LLM) assisted content analysis method to reveal this dynamics of expert participation in a multi-hazards multi-phases emergency management system in China. There are three main findings: (1) hazards with high epistemic complexity and value consensus foster substantive and sustained expert participation; (2) political sensitivity and decision urgency during crisis tend to constrain the space for the participation of external experts; (3) governance structure, including the organizational types and the openness of procedural design, condition how, when, and to what extent experts knowledge are positioned. By integrating LLM-assisted content analysis methods with an institutional analysis perspective, this study highlights the structural variation in expert participation. It offers new empirical and conceptual insights into the dynamics of knowledge mobilization in emergency management contexts.

With the rapid growth of foreign students scale, the sudden events happening also shows ascending trend every year. Although some local government agencies and colleges have established the relevant students emergency plan, the foreign students emergency still exists, so it is particularly urgent to establish and perfect the emergency management system for the foreign students. By the classification of foreign students emergency the current situation and deficiency of foreign students emergency management were analyzed. And a series of principles and methods were put forward for the construction of foreign students emergency management system.