Modeling and simulation for natural disaster contingency planning driven by high-resolution remote sensing images

• We enable evaluation of contingency plans using modelling and simulation technology.
• We model crowd behaviors under natural disasters.
• We develop a DDDAS simulation framework with the support of high resolution remote sensing information.

Natural disasters occur unexpectedly and usually result in huge losses of life and property. How to effectively make contingency plans is an intriguing question constantly faced by governments and experts. Human rescue operations are the most critical issue in contingency planning. A natural disaster scenario is, in general, highly complicated and dynamic. Modeling and simulation technologies have been gaining considerable momentum in investigating natural disaster scenarios to enable contingency planning. However, existing M&S systems still suffer from two open problems: (1) a lack of real data on natural disasters; and (2) the absence of methods and platforms to describe the collective behaviors of people in disaster situations. Considering these problems, an M&S framework for human rescue operations in a typical natural disaster, i.e., a landslide, has been developed in this study. The framework consists of three modules: (1) remote sensing information extraction, (2) landslide simulation, and (3) crowd simulation. The crowd simulation module is driven by the real/virtual data provided by the former modules. A number of simulations (using the Zhouqu landslide as an example) have been performed to study human relief operations spontaneously and under manipulation, with the effect of contingency plans highlighted. The experimental results demonstrate that  (1) the simulation framework is an effective tool for contingency planning, and (2) real data can make the simulation outputs more meaningful.