Design and Implementation of An Agent-Based Simulation for Emergency Response and Crisis Management

This paper introduces the simulation component of the WIPER system [Schoenharl et al., 2006]. The Wireless Integrated Phone-based Emergency Response (WIPER) system is a Dynamic Data-Driven Application System (DDDAS) that uses a stream of cellular network activity to detect, classify and predict crisis events. The WIPER simulation is essential to classification and prediction tasks, as the simulations model human activity, both in movement and cell phone activity, in an attempt to better understand crisis events. These Agent-Based simulations are parameterized with agent location data from the cellular service provider and agents inhabit a GIS space representative of the urban area. Simulations include models for normal and crisis behaviors in an urban setting. Simulations generate call activity and agent locations, similar to that generated by the observation of cell phone users in an urban setting. A taxonomy of crisis events is presented, which has simplified the development of the simulation. We present an overview of the design and implementation of the WIPER simulation along with validation and verification of the system and an evaluation of runtime characteristics.