Integrating social networks into large-scale urban simulations for disaster responses

Abstract

Social connections between people influence how they behave and where they go; however, such networks are rarely incorporated in agent-based models of disaster. To address this, we introduce a novel synthetic population method which specifically creates social relationships. This synthetic population is then used to instantiate a geographically explicit agent-based model for the New York megacity region which captures pre- and post- disaster behaviors. We demonstrate not only how social networks can be incorporated into models of disaster but also how such networks can impact decision making, opening up a variety of new application areas where network structures matter in urban settings.