Modeling of a Regional Hub Reception Center to improve the speed of an urban area evacuation

Abstract

The city of Chicago, Illinois is making strides to become more prepared for large-scale disasters. One idea is called a Regional Hub Reception Center (RHRC), which converts an existing facility into a temporary shelter for evacuees in the event of a 10-kiloton nuclear blast being detonated in the center of downtown. The RHRC will provide the evacuees with basic needs and register them for assignment at a more permanent shelter. The Regional Catastrophic Planning Team needs to know if its estimates for time, personnel, and resources are accurate. The best and most reliable way to test what will be needed is to perform simulations. However, large full-scale simulations are time consuming and expensive. A computer-generated model, however, can accurately simulate many variables and scenarios to test the RHRC quickly, cheaply, and repetitively to make it more effective if used. A computer modeling software tool, called AnyLogic, is a multi-paradigm modeling program that allows users to build agent-based, discrete event, and system dynamics models. The modeling paradigm that best suits the simulation of an RHRC is discrete event modeling. This is because a discrete event model represents a chronological sequence of events. When an event occurs in a discrete event model, it represents a change to the entire system. An RHRC is a chronological sequence of events and a system of systems that are constantly changing. As evacuees move through the RHRC, they flow through a predefined set of points, ranging from registration, to care, to shelter assignment, and many others. The data provided is supported by research or by personal field experience where research has not yet been performed. A model is a simulation of the real world. Though it does not represent the 100% of the variables that could occur in an actual simulation, it takes into consideration as many as possible to provide the most accurate results. The RHRC AnyLogic model is a simulation that estimates resource needs and processes of an RHRC. The RHRC model created to support this paper was developed using data collected by all students in Dr. J. Eric Dietz's Homeland Security Seminar graduate level class at Purdue University in the spring semester of 2012. The purpose of this study is to determine if the goals of the Regional Catastrophic Planning Team are attainable based upon the data collected.