Towards thresholds of disaster management performance under demographic change: exploring functional relationships using agent-based modeling
Effective disaster management is a core feature for the protection of communities against natural disasters such as floods. Disaster management organizations (DMOs) are expected to contribute to ensuring this protection. However, what happens when their resources to cope with a flood are at stake...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2016-10-01
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| Series: | Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences |
| Online Access: | https://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/16/2287/2016/nhess-16-2287-2016.pdf |
| Summary: | Effective disaster management is a core feature for the protection of
communities against natural disasters such as floods. Disaster management
organizations (DMOs) are expected to contribute to ensuring this protection.
However, what happens when their resources to cope with a flood are at stake
or the intensity and frequency of the event exceeds their capacities? Many
cities in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, were strongly hit by several
floods in the last years and are additionally challenged by demographic
change, with an ageing society and out-migration leading to population
shrinkage in many parts of Saxony. Disaster management, which is mostly
volunteer-based in Germany, is particularly affected by this change, leading
to a loss of members. We propose an agent-based simulation model that acts as
a "virtual lab" to explore the impact of various changes on disaster
management performance. Using different scenarios we examine the impact of
changes in personal resources of DMOs, their access to operation relevant
information, flood characteristics as well as differences between geographic
regions. A loss of DMOs and associated manpower caused by demographic change
has the most profound impact on the performance. Especially in rural,
upstream regions population decline in combination with very short lead times
can put disaster management performance at risk. |
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| ISSN: | 1561-8633 1684-9981 |