Social Impacts of Nuclear Detonations

The Center for Social Complexity at George Mason University will work with the defense contractor, Applied Research Associates (ARA), and others on a Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) project. The project will investigate modeling Human-Infrastructure Interactions Following Nuclear Detonations and is part of DTRA’s Social Impacts of Nuclear Detonations (SIND) program. The 3+ year and $600,000 effort started 10 September 2021 and will develop models that incorporate physiological (i.e., injuries or causalities from nuclear detonations), psychological, and sociological phenomena/ behaviors into an Agent-Based Model (ABM) of the infrastructures, their workers, and their customers. Center co-directors Dr. William G. Kennedy will serve at the PI, Dr. Hamdi Kavak as Co-PI. They plan to employ a graduate research assistant and two consultants. The consultants are Dr. Andrew Crooks at the University at Buffalo, NY and Dr. Christopher Dyer of the University of New Mexico.

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