NetLogo User Community Models

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## WHAT IS IT?
This model simulates a natural disaster (earthquake or flood) response scenario in a localized context. This is developed based on the experience of Nepal, but can be adapted for any situation. This model presents a community where the people are affected by a natural disaster (Earthquake or Flood) and simulates the results of management decision to the affected population.

When a disaster event strikes, people will be affected according to their exposure, vulnerability and coping capacity. As the time passes by, people will recover and continue to normal routine, However, the path to recovery is difficult and to speed-up the recovery, government and humanitarian organizations provide relief support. For efficient and effective relief works, information about the affected community is important. This model is designed to use as a learning resources on Disaster Management, particularly on response management, particularly to highlight the importance of Needs assessments.

This model is intended to play in training environment, where the participants will play with the model, with an objectives of minimizing the total cost of humanitarian action (humanitarian and financial cost)

## HOW IT WORKS
The modelling environment is set at municipal environment, divided into four wards. The symbol of person indicates the people affected by the disaster events at different scale. The Red coloured symbol is for highly affected peoples, Yellow for Medium impacts and Blue is for people with low impacts. Green coloured symbol represents people with very little or no effect of the disaster.

This model places you as the key authority who manages the response, stationed at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC). When a disaster strikes, you have four options:

1. Do nothing. Just watch, peoples are resilient and find their own way towards recovery.
2. Send relief items to the affected area. When send the items, it will take around six hour to the affected area. The items will be distributed to the affected people.
3. Send an assessment team. Reports will be available after around 24 hours.
4. Ask for quick update: You will receive a brief information about the affected area, after three hours.

Each of the decisions have costs associated with them. The first type cost is humanitarian cost, which means, the cost of people being affected. Each day for a people with high, medium and low disaster impact will cost you 3, 2, and 1 unit (whatever currency you would like to call it either $, €, £, Rs. or any other) respectively. The second type of cost is financial cost, which will add-up when you make any decision (cost of each unit of relief item, cost for sending assessment team and asking for an update.
The output window is assumed as the ‘Radio Room’ of the emergency Operations centre, where key alerts and information are feed-in. You will be able to see any assessment data below the radio room, if available.
When you send relief items to the affected community, if you have the assessment data, the relief will be distributed according the level of affect, ie, classified as high, medium and low. But it you don’t have assessment data, relief will be distributed equally to all the people.
Similarly, when you ask for update, it will give you quick update and also keep out the people in relief pool who have been recovered already.
The plots at the lower part of the page will provide you information about the results of the simulation.

## HOW TO USE IT
Each tick represents an hour in this model.

#### Setup Variables:

The POPULATION slider determines how many people to create for the simulation.

The DAYSTORUN slider is the total time period for the model to run. It will stop after that time.

The model has four variables, which determine the behaviour of disaster affect and recovery:

EXPOSURE: Exposure to hazards (1 to 10)

VULNERABILITY: Disaster Vulnerability of the people (1 to 10)

COPING CAPACITY: Capacity to cope with disaster (1 to 10)

BASERECOVERYPERIOD: A period, which will take a person to recover form disaster affect, in optimum condition.

#### Location and Events:

TargetDistirct and Municipality: Names of the target district and municipality.
EVENT: Earthquake or Flood, which you would like to simulation for. The selection does not have any effect in model behaviours.

COST PER UNIT: Variables as a unit rate to calculate total costs.

### HOW TO PLAY:
Choose the setup variables and click on go button. In the meantime, choose your decision commands. Whether you wish to send relief items to all or specific wards, send assessment team or ask for an update. You need to keep an eye in the radio room.

After the simulation, you may review how your decisions impacted the people’s conditions.

## THINGS TO NOTICE

Please see, if there is any impact of Relief support to the recovery. Similarly, the timing of the relief has any impact or not.

Does Relief support with assessment or without assessment has any impact?

## THINGS TO TRY

Try changing setup variables, particularly CopingCapacity and vulnerability and see if there is any changes in the recovery process.

Try sending relief with or without assessment in different wards, and see whether there are any differences in behaviours.

## EXTENDING THE MODEL

You may add additional features such as aftershocks or secondary hazards at different timings and see how the model behaves.

## NETLOGO FEATURES

This model uses Random-Poisson distribution to allocate variable units for copingcapacities, exposures and vulnerability.

## RELATED MODELS

## CREDITS AND REFERENCES
Developed by Surya Poudel. Contact: suryapoudel@outlook.com