US Coast Guard and Rutgers apply new software to disaster planning

The more complicated the environment, the tougher it is to do effective disaster planning. For cities in some major port areas, government officials are turning to computer-based simulations from Rutgers University.

Hurricane Katrina and the September 11th attack have alerted the US to the devastation that can ensue from natural disasters and terrorist activities. Now officials in other parts of the globe, ranging from the Istanbul Strait to the Delaware Bay, are working with researchers from Rutgers University on computer-based methods of comprehensive disaster planning.

For any city, the task of disaster planning is made more difficult by the virtually endless variety of scenarios that could conceivably unfold. But some of this nation's most vulnerable areas are major waterways, suggested Dr. Tayfur Altiok, a professor in Rutgers University's Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

The Delaware River and Bay area is located nearby several major US cities, raising the spectre of potentially severe crippling effects on society and the economy "in the case of (port) stoppage," the professor said, addressing a crowd at this week's Maritime Security Conference & Expo in New York.

In the Delaware River and Bay, the Rutgers team is working with the Delaware Bay Sector of the US Coast Guard.

But where the Delaware River and Bay handles about 3,000 container cargo ships a year, the Istanbul Strait off the coast of Turkey deals with 50,000 of these vessels annually, many of them carrying oil from Russia and the Balkans.

"There are zillions of people (in the Istanbul Strait). It is a nightmare," Altiok remarked.

Yet despite the complexities surrounding these port environments. officials are now striving to create plans that would restore port cities to minimal and then to full operations, under innumerable types of disaster situtations.

Just to restore minimal operations, for instance, these plans need to account for communications, safe food and water, transportation, management of "displaced populations," financial assistance to victims who have lost their jobs, and restoration of electricity, natural gas, water, and gasoline to the area. And that's only for starters.

In response, government officials in both the Delaware Bay and Istanbul Strait are turning for assistance to computer simulations created at Rutgers' Lab for Port Security.

To help prepare simulations that mirror the risks associated with various sorts of disasters, Rutgers researchers are using a Windows-based math program for calculating probability.

Essentially, the professor explained, "the consequences [of a disaster scenario] times the probability equals the risk."

Speaking with BetaNews later, though, Altiok emphasized that the researchers aren't leaving it to the software to do the disaster planning for them. Instead, "human intelligence" is being applied to the mathematical results, according to the professor.

Benjamin Melamed, a Rutgers Business School professor who is a partner of Altiok's at the lab, said that the disaster planning simulations draw from mathematical modeling technicques he first started developing three decades ago, when he worked at AT&T.

Altiok said during his presentation that the Rutgers team also hopes to create computer simulations that will help officials in the New York City area cope with disaster planning.