The Research Colloquium on Computational Social Science/Data Science speaker for Friday, September 13, will be Kim McEligot, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research at George Mason University. Kim’s talk entitled “Sea Bright, New Jersey Reconstructed: Agent-Based Protection Theory Model Responses to Hurricane Sandy” (abstract below) will begin at 3:00 in the Center for Social Complexity Suite (373-381) located on the 3rd floor of Research Hall. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session along with light refreshments.
This session will be live-streamed on the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7YCR-pBTZ_9865orDNVHNA
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For a list of upcoming and previous seminars, please visit: https://cos.gmu.edu/cds/calendar/
Abstract: Coastal flooding is the most expensive type of natural disaster in the United States. Policy initiatives to mitigate the effects of these events are dependent upon understanding flood victim responses at an individual and municipal level. Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) is an effective tool for analyzing community-wide responses to natural disaster, but the quality of the ABM’s performance is often challenging to determine. This paper discusses the complexity of the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) and Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) for human decision making regarding hazard mitigations. A combined (PADM/PMT) model is developed and integrated into the MASON modeling framework. The ABM implements a hind-cast of Hurricane Sandy’s damage to Sea Bright, NJ and homeowner post-flood reconstruction decisions. It is validated against damage assessments and post-storm surveys. The contribution of socio-economic factors and built environment on model performance is also addressed and suggests that mitigation for townhouse communities will be challenging.
Bio: Kim McEligot is a PhD candidate in the Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research at George Mason University. His research interests include federation of computational fluid dynamics coastal flood modeling with geo-spatial agent-based modeling for individual and community level flood mitigation policy analysis. He holds an M.S. in Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and an M.A. in National Security and Military Affairs from the U.S. Naval War College. His email address is kmceligo@masonlive.gmu.edu.