Azimuth Incorporated and Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research, and Innovation Center (MATRIC) have received grants from FEMA to create a simulation that models "what-if" scenarios. The result, Modeling & Simulation (M&S) Capability for Resource Consumption and Consequence Management, combines GIS with aspects of gaming, similar to programs like SIMS. Users have control over certain perameters, like total number of evacuees, percentage of evacuees seeking shelter, average fuel economy per vehicle, and hospital bed availability, and by defining these parameters can construct response scenarios. The M&S program then runs this scenario and shows the consequences of that particular response plan.
Emergency planners can model an infinite number of scenarios using more than 30 parameters chosen by experts - or they can add their own to meet new requirements. As in SimCity, players start with a finite quantity of resources and must allocate them wisely. Users can compare multiple simulations to see which response plan works best in a particular scenario; the program can produce reports for a specific resource (like hospital beds); temporal functionality is another feature, allowing users to pause, play, fast-forward, and rewind. The system allows a high level of interactivity and experimentation with alternative plans: "scenario options are limited only by the user's imagination".
The M&S program has been used to model potential consequences of an evacuation if the Bluestone Dam in Hinton, West Virginia were to fail. Emergency planners used a barrier polygon tool to simulate inaccessible areas as well as a flood inundation map provided by the US Army Corps of Engineers and the WV National Guard to identify shelters and hospital resources that would be unavailable during the emergency.
The program is continually being developed to provide new options and new tools. The underlying technology of the program can also be applied to model disease spread and animal migration. The usefulness of this program is unlimited; emergency planners can prepare like never before. They use the computer simulation in a trial-and-error process to learn and overcome flaws; in real time, they will be prepared with the best plan for the particular scenario.
Wow GIS and video games? It seems like this is great technology for disaster relief as well as more preventive city-planning. It would be interesting to see what other aspects of GIS could be incorporated into gaming... maybe habitat restoration?
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty interesting idea coming from someone who just bought Sims 2 last weekend (!), and not to throw too much of a tangent in there, but I wonder if in the future GIS will meld with the gaming world somewhat. Video games today are already ridiculously complicated and tremendously social, and it would be so amazing if GIS research could be done with...gamers. What a weird concept!
ReplyDeleteI actually know a PhD student at UT who is doing her research into "virtual geographies" her name is Leigh Schwartz and here is a link to an article she wrote about the topic: http://130.166.124.2/~aether/pdf/volume_02/introduction.pdf
DeleteAfter reading this article, I realized that GIS has the potential to be an extremely useful educational tool for younger kids and children. Allowing kids to have "control" over a city and see how factors such as disasters or even environmental pollutants can affect both the land and the people would help them to see why they need to try to avoid these situations. Since the younger population is so involved with technology and electronics already, this could be a fun way for this information to reach them without making them feel as if they are being lectured or punished.
ReplyDeleteWhat is cool about this article is how they explain scenario analysis, but basically using the GIS platform to model all possible outcomes allowing for all type of planning. Here is a poster using scenario analysis to do hydrology modeling:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.epa.gov/esd/land-sci/pdf/scenario_analysis_sp.pdf
This kind of modeling could be a strong student symposium work.
This is cool. The military and the government have always seemed to be at the forefront of simulation-based exercises, and combining it with a user-driven platform like video games is absolute genius. The game, Operation: Flashpoint, released back in the 1990s was actually created using military grade GIS mapping and cartographic technology to create one of the very first virtual worlds; moreover, it generated some 50 square kilometers of game space.
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