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.

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.

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.

This article argues that the agent-based computational model permits a distinctive approach to social science for which the term “generative” is suitable. In defending this terminology, features distinguishing the approach from both “inductive” and “deductive” science are given. Then, the following specific contributions to social science are discussed: The agent-based computational model is a new tool for empirical research. It offers a natural environment for the study of connectionist phenomena in social science. Agent-based modeling provides a powerful way to address certain enduring—and especially interdisciplinary—questions. It allows one to subject certain core theories—such as neoclassical microeconomics—to important types of stress (e.g., the effect of evolving preferences). It permits one to study how rules of individual behavior give rise—or “map up”—to macroscopic regularities and organizations. In turn, one can employ laboratory behavioral research findings to select among competing agent-based (“bottom up”) models. The agent-based approach may well have the important effect of decoupling individual rationality from macroscopic equilibrium and of separating decision science from social science more generally. Agent-based modeling offers powerful new forms of hybrid theoretical-computational work; these are particularly relevant to the study of non-equilibrium systems. The agentbased approach invites the interpretation of society as a distributed computational device, and in turn the interpretation of social dynamics as a type of computation. This interpretation raises important foundational issues in social science—some related to intractability, and some to undecidability proper. Finally, since “emergence” figures prominently in this literature, I take up the connection between agent-based modeling and classical emergentism, criticizing the latter and arguing that the two are incompatible. ! 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Computational Social Science

According to recent studies, Vietnam is one of the twenty countries most affected by natural disasters in the world, and particularly by floods either on the low elevation coastal zones (risk of submersion) or along the Red River and the Mekong River (risk of flooding). In this context, dams are both means of mitigation but also threats given the possible failures and ruptures. The authorities must, therefore, prepare warning systems and evacuation plans for the downstream population to avoid loss of life. Agent-based models are now the approach of choice to support such preparedness by considering the system as a whole and integrating dynamics of different natures: hydrology, population behavior, evacuation, crisis management, etc. To design such a decision-support tool, modelers generally need to couple different formalisms, such as diffusion equations when considering the hydrodynamic part, and agent-based modeling when considering inhabitants’ behaviors. This is the goal of the ESCAPE project, which uses agent-based simulations to explore evacuation strategies and contribute to the development and evaluation of evacuation plans. In this study, to improve the ESCAPE framework, we propose to combine a hydraulic dam failure model with an agent-based evacuation model using the GAMA platform. We focus on the evacuation of a Hanoi city (Vietnam) district, threatened by flooding due to the failure of the Hoa Binh dam located more than 80 km upstream of the city. We demonstrate how to methodologically and operationally couple a hydrodynamic water diffusion model (implemented using the HEC-RAS software) and a multi-paradigm evacuation model (using the ESCAPE framework). Our goal is to extend and enrich this population evacuation model by coupling it with flood simulation.

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.

As confirmed by the extreme tsunami events over the last decade (the 2004 Indian Ocean, 2010 Chile and 2011 Japan tsunami events), mitigation measures and effective evacuation planning are needed to reduce disaster risks. Modeling tsunami evacuations is an alternative means to analyze evacuation plans and possible scenarios of evacuees’ behaviors. In this paper, practical applications of an agent-based tsunami evacuation model are presented to demonstrate the contributions that agent-based modeling has added to tsunami evacuation simulations and tsunami mitigation efforts. A brief review of previous agent-based evacuation models in the literature is given to highlight recent progress in agent-based methods. Finally, challenges are noted for bridging gaps between geoscience and social science within the agent-based approach for modeling tsunami evacuations.

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.

The current economic crisis has provoked an active response from the interdisciplinary scientific community. As a result many papers suggesting what can be improved in understanding of the complex socio-economics systems were published. Some of the most prominent papers on the topic include (Bouchaud, 2009; Farmer and Foley, 2009; Farmer et al, 2012; Helbing, 2010; Pietronero, 2008). These papers share the idea that agent-based modeling is essential for the better understanding of the complex socio-economic systems and consequently better policy making. Yet in order for an agent-based model to be useful it should also be analytically tractable, possess a macroscopic treatment (Cristelli et al, 2012). In this work we shed a new light on our research group's contributions towards understanding of the correspondence between the inter-individual interactions and collective behavior. We also provide some new insights into the implications of the global and local interactions, the leadership and the predator-prey interactions in the complex socio-economic systems.