Getting prepared
Researchers developing disaster-planning tool that will work like a video game
A pair of researchers in Halifax are working on an elaborate, computerized disaster-planning simulator that will one day function like a multiplayer video game – the first version of which has already plotted what could happen if the port city is inundated by a catastrophic flood.
Professor Ahsan Habib at Dalhousie University says a test of an early model has suggested it would take 15 hours to evacuate the densely populated Halifax peninsula if the ocean suddenly rose between 3.9 and 7.9 metres.
“We have only five exit points ... (making) our transportation network very vulnerable in a mass evacuation,” Habib said in an interview Monday from the Dalhousie Transportation Collaboratory, a lab that brings together civil engineers and urban planners. “This is just a bare-bones model, and now we’ll start playing with it.”
Habib said the peninsula’s narrow roads and lack of highways would make an evacuation particularly difficult.
“The ultimate goal is come up with some sort of a game at the end, making it much more user friendly so that emergency managers can get training and learn lessons,” Habib said.
Dalhousie professor Kevin Quigley said the final version of the program will operate much like a so-called massive multiplayer online role-playing game – but that will take another two years to develop.
“As more young people join emergency management offices, this is the kind of tool that they’ll be comfortable using,” said Quigley, an expert on risk at the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance. “People are highly optimistic on video games. They believe they can solve problems: they can slay the dragon, capture the castle and save everybody. We need to get that kind of optimistic attitude in solving our public policy problems.”