A framework for simulating human cognitive behavior and movement when predicting impacts of catastrophic events

Our nation has seen an increased need to train its civil authorities and emergency personnel under life-threatening scenarios where human life and critical infrastructure are assumed to be at risk. This training is typically obtained or re-enforced via (human) performance-based tests. At issue is the ability to accurately simulate the scenarios without exposing personnel or human test subjects to injury. In addition, these performance-based tests carry a large monetary cost, and certain scenarios are so complicated, catastrophic or rare that any performance-based test is unrealistic. Our paper outlines the research that must be conducted to develop a framework for modeling and analyzing risk-assessment and decision making when evacuating large populations. The research is aimed at extending an existing construct for simulating passenger and crew behavior during aircraft evacuations, to larger populations, and relies upon rare-event simulation methods, parallel-and-distributed simulation and agent-based simulation.