reported the results to relevant organizations. It was recognized afterwards that the
calculation results were useful for evacuation planning, but none of the organizations used them due to improper information strategy by the government.
In addition, information sharing was so poor between different organizations
such as TEPCO, the central government, Self-Defense Force, police, and the local
governments, that evacuation planning and operation were carried out on an ad hoc
basis. The most symbolic and miserable case of the consequence from the poor
administration was 19 deaths in the evacuee patients from Futaba Hospital.
Following the evacuation order, 209 patients who could walk on their own and
almost all hospital staff left the hospital boarding five busses dispatched by the town
on March 12, but some 130 patients of Futaba Hospital, 98 people staying at the
related nursing home, two facility staff, and the hospital director stayed behind.
Okuma Town, however, misjudged that the evacuation from the hospital was
completed. Two days later, a squadron of the Ground Self-Defense Force Liaison
transferred all 98 people from the nursing home and 34 patients from Futaba
Hospital to Iwaki-Koyo High School. It took around 11 h due to confusion in
deciding the facility to accept these evacuees, and 8 patients died meanwhile.
Transfer of the patients remaining at Futaba Hospital delayed for the reported
critical situation of the nuclear reactor as well as poor information sharing between
the relavant organizations, and the operation was completed early morning on
March 17. The delay resulted in additional deaths of 11 patients.
The disaster described above would have been avoided if we had elaborated the
administration of emergency response considering accident scenarios that really
match the crisis. Different from engineering design of hardware equipment, however, no systematic or technical design methods have been established for the
administration of emergency response. Techniques for optimal planning or normative decision-making have been developed in Operations Research and applied
to emergency response problems such as evacuation planning. Most of them do not
work in ill-structured situations of emergency, because they rely on complete and
accurate information to set up mathematical models and obtain solutions. In
addition, the conventional mathematical methods cannot deal with organizational
interactions, which play a very important role in emergency response as described
so far.
Some new approaches of administration design therefore are expected such as
agent-based organizational simulation or application of bio-inspired design of
complex social systems. Kanno, Morimoto, and Furuta proposed agent-based
organizational simulation for emergency response planning [5]. Figure 2 illustrates
the proposed simulation architecture of organizational emergency response. The
simulation model consists of many agents representing various organizations relevant to emergency response. The scenario manager is a controller, which provides
messages on the progress of disaster to the agents following a particular scenario.
The simulation system outputs logs of communications, actions and resource
consumptions for each agent. One can evaluate the total performance of emergency
response by analysing these logs. The time required for executing some task, for
example, can be a measure of the effectiveness and efficiency of the task execution.
40
K. Furuta and T. Kanno
calculation results were useful for evacuation planning, but none of the organizations used them due to improper information strategy by the government.
In addition, information sharing was so poor between different organizations
such as TEPCO, the central government, Self-Defense Force, police, and the local
governments, that evacuation planning and operation were carried out on an ad hoc
basis. The most symbolic and miserable case of the consequence from the poor
administration was 19 deaths in the evacuee patients from Futaba Hospital.
Following the evacuation order, 209 patients who could walk on their own and
almost all hospital staff left the hospital boarding five busses dispatched by the town
on March 12, but some 130 patients of Futaba Hospital, 98 people staying at the
related nursing home, two facility staff, and the hospital director stayed behind.
Okuma Town, however, misjudged that the evacuation from the hospital was
completed. Two days later, a squadron of the Ground Self-Defense Force Liaison
transferred all 98 people from the nursing home and 34 patients from Futaba
Hospital to Iwaki-Koyo High School. It took around 11 h due to confusion in
deciding the facility to accept these evacuees, and 8 patients died meanwhile.
Transfer of the patients remaining at Futaba Hospital delayed for the reported
critical situation of the nuclear reactor as well as poor information sharing between
the relavant organizations, and the operation was completed early morning on
March 17. The delay resulted in additional deaths of 11 patients.
The disaster described above would have been avoided if we had elaborated the
administration of emergency response considering accident scenarios that really
match the crisis. Different from engineering design of hardware equipment, however, no systematic or technical design methods have been established for the
administration of emergency response. Techniques for optimal planning or normative decision-making have been developed in Operations Research and applied
to emergency response problems such as evacuation planning. Most of them do not
work in ill-structured situations of emergency, because they rely on complete and
accurate information to set up mathematical models and obtain solutions. In
addition, the conventional mathematical methods cannot deal with organizational
interactions, which play a very important role in emergency response as described
so far.
Some new approaches of administration design therefore are expected such as
agent-based organizational simulation or application of bio-inspired design of
complex social systems. Kanno, Morimoto, and Furuta proposed agent-based
organizational simulation for emergency response planning [5]. Figure 2 illustrates
the proposed simulation architecture of organizational emergency response. The
simulation model consists of many agents representing various organizations relevant to emergency response. The scenario manager is a controller, which provides
messages on the progress of disaster to the agents following a particular scenario.
The simulation system outputs logs of communications, actions and resource
consumptions for each agent. One can evaluate the total performance of emergency
response by analysing these logs. The time required for executing some task, for
example, can be a measure of the effectiveness and efficiency of the task execution.
40
K. Furuta and T. Kanno