Bottlenecks of the system in terms of the workload or information sharing can be
identified as well by comparing the amount of executed tasks or processed information by each agent. Comaring simulation results by changing the action rules of
agents and the disaster scenario will give us useful insights for rational emergency
response planning.
4 Enhancing Resilience
Resilience, which is the ability of a system to absorb changes and to maintain its
functionality, has attracted interests of experts in many areas after Tohoku
Earthquake and Fukushima. While the conventional safety design of artifacts
focuses just on the within design-basis region, resilience sheds light also on the
beyond design-basis regions. Resilience of a system is often represented by the
speed of recovery from a degraded state of system functionality after a crisis. It is,
however, multifaceted features of a system, and Woods enumerated the following
four essential characteristics of resilience [6]:
Buffering capacity the size or kinds of disruptions the system can absorb or adapt
to without a fundamental breakdown in performance or in the
system’s structure;
Flexibility
the system’s ability to restructure itself in response to external
changes or pressures;
Fig. 2 Simulation architecture of organizational emergency response
How the Fukushima Daiichi Accident Changed …
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