Disaster Management Performance under Behavior Changes: Exploring Scenarios using Agent-Based Modeling

Natural disasters have highlighted the importance of humanitarian logistics, which involves systematized processes for managing emergencies such as the location of assistance centers and temporary shelters. These processes are often challenging, especially in situations where infrastructure is affected by flooding. To address this, a hybrid approach combining a mathematical multicriteria decision model and an agent-based simulation model is proposed to manage emergency strategies for urban flooding risks. The focus is on the principles of humanitarian logistics to prioritize the spatial location of temporary shelters. The use of multicriteria methods recognizes the subjective nature of decision-making and four criteria were established to evaluate the order of prioritization for temporary emergency shelters. Agent-based models can simulate complex and heterogeneous systems, such as the logistics of managing floods over large areas. Through this approach, an order of locations for community or collective temporary shelters was established, including the necessary computational and logistic operations needed to save lives. This approach provides a decision support tool that can assist in the construction of an Emergency Plan in response to floods, at the strategic or operational level of logistical decisions. The proposed hybrid approach is effective in risk management and can help address the challenges associated with implementing humanitarian logistics in disaster situations.

Keywords: Disaster management, Disaster risk management, Natural disasters, Temporary Shelters, MCDM, MAUT, Agent based simulation.

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