MODELING DYNAMICS OF POST DISASTER RECOVERY A Dissertation by ALI NEJAT Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2011 Major Subject: Civil Engineering MODELING DYNAMICS OF POST DISASTER RECOVERY A Dissertation by ALI NEJAT Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Ivan Damnjanovic Committee Members, Stuart D. Anderson Kenneth F. Reinschmidt Sergiy Butenko Arnold Vedlitz Head of Department, John Niedzwecki August 2011 Major Subject: Civil Engineering iii ABSTRACT Modeling Dynamics of Post Disaster Recovery. (August 2011) Ali Nejat, B.S., Zanjan University, Zanjan, Iran; M.S., Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Ivan Damnjanovic Natural disasters result in loss of lives, damage to built facilities, and interruption of businesses. The losses are not instantaneous, but rather continue to occur until the community is restored to a functional socio-economic entity. Hence, it is essential that policy makers recognize this dynamic aspect of the losses incurred and make realistic plans to enhance recovery. However, this cannot take place without understanding how homeowners react to recovery signals. These signals can come in different ways: from policy makers showing their strong commitment to restore the community by providing financial support and/or restoration of lifeline infrastructure; or from the neighbors showing their willingness to reconstruct. The goal of this research is to develop a model that can account for homeowners’ dynamic interactions in both organizational and spatial domains. The spatial domain of interaction focuses on how homeowners process signals from the environment, such as neighbors reconstructing and local agencies restoring infrastructure, while the organizational domain of interaction focuses on how agents process signals from other stakeholders that do not directly affect the environment like insurers do. The hypothesis of this study is that these interactions iv significantly influence decisions to reconstruct and stay, or sell and leave. A multi-agent framework is used to capture emergent behavior such as spatial patterns and formation of clusters. The developed framework is illustrated and validated using experimental data sets. The results from simulation model confirm that spatial and organizational externalities play an important role in agents’ decision-making and can greatly impact the recovery process. The results further highlight the significant impact of discount factor and the accuracy of the signals on the percentage of reconstruction. Finally, cluster formation was shown to be an emergent phenomenon during the recovery process and spatial modeling technique demonstrated a significantly higher impact on formation of clusters in comparison with experimental model and hybrid model. v DEDICATION To my parents and my brother. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the excellent academic guidance and financial assistance offered by Dr. Ivan Damnjanovic during my graduate studies at Texas A&M University (TAMU). Without his guidance, this dissertation would have not become a reality. Working with Dr. Damnjanovic was a wonderful experience in many ways and I will never forget him in my life. I also sincerely appreciate the excellent guidance and financial assistance offered by Dr. Stuart Anderson during my studies as a PhD student and I am very grateful for all my research opportunities that were offered by him. I would also want to extend my gratitude to Dr. Kenneth Reinschmidt for his excellent guidance, support and feedbacks on various aspects of my studies including this dissertation. I also sincerely appreciate the excellent guidance and support provided by Dr. Butenko and Dr. Vedlitz on the different aspects of my doctoral research. In general, I am very fortunate to have an extraordinary advisory committee with a wide range of expertise that helped me view the challenges from multiple perspectives and shape this dissertation in its current form. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ x LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... xii 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Problem Statement .............................................................................................. 1 1.2. Dissertation Goal ................................................................................................. 2 1.3. Scope ................................................................................................................... 3 1.4. Research Objectives ............................................................................................ 3 1.4.1. Micro-level Research Questions ............................................................. 4 1.4.2. Macro-level Research Question .............................................................. 6 1.5. Organization of the Dissertation.......................................................................... 7 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................. 9 2.1. Disaster Modeling ............................................................................................... 9 2.1.1. Loss Modeling ....................................................................................... 12 2.1.2. Recovery Modeling ............................................................................... 16 2.2. Research Problem .............................................................................................. 17 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................................................... 19 3.1. General Framework ........................................................................................... 19 3.2. Multi-Domain Interactions ................................................................................ 21 3.3. Experimental Setup ........................................................................................... 23 3.3.1. Spatial Interactions Experimental Setup ............................................... 23 3.3.2. Bargaining Situation Experimental Setup ............................................. 24 3.4. Summary ........................................................................................................... 25 viii Page 4. MODELING SPATIAL INTERACTIONS ............................................................... 26 4.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 26 4.2. Theoretical Model ............................................................................................. 27 4.2.1. Signals and Uncertainty ........................................................................ 28 4.2.2. Game and Behavior ............................................................................... 34 4.2.3. Game Solution ....................................................................................... 36 4.2.4. MAS Integration .................................................................................... 38 4.3. Empirical Model ................................................................................................ 39 4.3.1. Experiment Design ................................................................................ 39 4.3.2. Model Formulation ................................................................................ 42 4.3.3. Parameter Estimation ............................................................................ 45 4.3.4. Experiment Results ............................................................................... 46 4.3.5. Discussion of the Results ...................................................................... 52 4.3.6. MAS Integration .................................................................................... 53 4.4. Summary ........................................................................................................... 54 4.5. Limitations ........................................................................................................ 55 5. MODELING ORGANIZATIONAL INTERACTIONS ............................................ 56 5.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 56 5.2. Theoretical Model ............................................................................................. 56 5.2.1. Background ........................................................................................... 56 5.2.2. Model Formulation ................................................................................ 58 5.2.3. Model Solution ...................................................................................... 60 5.2.4. MAS Integration .................................................................................... 63 5.3. Empirical Model ................................................................................................ 63 5.3.1. Experiment Design ................................................................................ 63 5.3.2. Model Formulation ................................................................................ 64 5.3.3. Model Fitting ......................................................................................... 65 5.3.4. Estimation Results ................................................................................. 80 5.3.5. MAS Integration .................................................................................... 80 5.3.6. Summary ............................................................................................... 81 5.4. Limitations and Future Work ............................................................................ 81 6. MULTIAGENT SYSTEM SIMULATION MODEL ................................................ 83 6.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 83 6.2. Multi Agent Systems ......................................................................................... 83 6.3. MAS-Model Structure and Specifications ........................................................ 85 6.3.1. “import-world” Module ......................................................................... 85 6.3.2. “setup-agent” Module ........................................................................... 92 ix Page 6.3.3. “run” Module ......................................................................................... 94 6.3.4. “cluster” Module ................................................................................... 96 6.4. Model Validation ............................................................................................. 104 6.4.1. Sensitivity to Coefficient of Variation ................................................ 106 6.4.2. Sensitivity to Discount Factor ............................................................. 107 6.4.3. Theoretical Model versus Hybrid and Empirical Model ..................... 107 7. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RECOMMENDATIONS .................................. 110 7.1. Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 110 7.2. Limitations ...................................................................................................... 112 7.3. Contributions ................................................................................................... 113 7.3.1. General Contributions ......................................................................... 113 7.3.2. Engineering Contributions .................................................................. 113 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 116 APPENDIX A ................................................................................................................ 125 APPENDIX B ................................................................................................................ 127 APPENDIX C ................................................................................................................ 129 APPENDIX D ................................................................................................................ 133 APPENDIX E ................................................................................................................. 135 APPENDIX F ................................................................................................................. 139 APPENDIX G ................................................................................................................ 142 APPENDIX H ................................................................................................................ 144 APPENDIX I .................................................................................................................. 147 VITA .............................................................................................................................. 148 x LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 2-1. Post-disaster recovery adapted from Chang and Miles (2004) ..................... 11 Figure 3-1. Research approach ......................................................................................... 20 Figure 3-2. Interactions in multi-domain environment .................................................... 22 Figure 4-1. The updating process of the theoretical model .............................................. 33 Figure 5-1. Extensive form of the bargaining game ......................................................... 61 Figure 5-2. The process of experimental model development ......................................... 66 Figure 5-3. Goodness of fit plots (ModelRisk Vose Software) ........................................ 70 Figure 5-4. Fitted distributions to the data (EasyFit Software) ........................................ 71 Figure 5-5. Model fit plots (R) ......................................................................................... 76 Figure 5-6. Model fit plots-Without outlier ..................................................................... 77 Figure 6-1. Area selection in Google Earth© .................................................................... 87 Figure 6-2. Aerial map with points .................................................................................. 88 Figure 6-3. Aerial map with points and polylines ............................................................ 89 Figure 6-4. Imported area in Netlogo framework ............................................................ 90 Figure 6-5. “import-world” pseudo code ......................................................................... 91 Figure 6-6. Characterized model in Netlogo .................................................................... 92 Figure 6-7. “setup-agent” pseudo code ............................................................................ 94 Figure 6-8. “run” pseudo code ......................................................................................... 96 Figure 6-9. DBSCAN pseudo code .................................................................................. 98 Figure 6-10. Clique pseudo code .................................................................................... 100 Figure 6-11. Case study – Kobe earthquake .................................................................. 101