Toward Human-Centered Simulation Modeling for Critical Infrastructure Disaster Recovery Planning
This work addresses the challenge of improving disaster recovery planning for critical infrastructure managers and emergency responders, but it appears incremental as it combines existing approaches without presenting new empirical results.
The paper tackles the problem of critical infrastructure disaster recovery planning, which currently relies on expert judgment and lacks quantitative tools, by proposing human-centered simulation modeling to simplify complexities and make planning more understandable for experts and decision-makers.
Critical infrastructure is vulnerable to a broad range of hazards. Timely and effective recovery of critical infrastructure after extreme events is crucial. However, critical infrastructure disaster recovery planning is complicated and involves both domain- and user-centered characteristics and complexities. Recovery planning currently uses few quantitative computer-based tools and instead largely relies on expert judgment. Simulation modeling can simplify domain-centered complexities but not the human factors. Conversely, human-centered design places end-users at the center of design. We discuss the benefits of combining simulation modeling with human-centered design and refer it as human-centered simulation modeling. Human-centered simulation modeling has the capability to make recovery planning simpler and more understandable for critical infrastructure and emergency management experts and other recovery planning decision-makers.