University of Science and Technology of Hanoi

Information and Communication Technology Department

Master 1 Internship Report

Academic year 2015 - 2016

Initiation of learning GAMA to service simulated rescue scenarios of urban

earthquake, applied to Thanh Xuan and Dong Da district, Hanoi

presented by

DAO Ngoc Mai

registered at University of Paris - Nord (Paris 13)

supervised by Dr. Nguyen Xuan Anh

Host organization : Vietnam Earthquake Information and Tsunami Warning Center, Institute of
Geophysics, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology

Hanoi - Vietnam
II
ATTESTATION

I hereby, DAO Ngoc Mai , certify that my report doesn't contain plagiarism (copy/paste) from other
sources.

In case of plagiarism in my report, I know the consequences and I understand that my report won't
be evaluated. In this case, my M1 internship will be noted as "fail".

Date: 12th September, 2016

Signature:

DAO Ngoc Mai

III
Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude my internship advisor Dr. Nguyen Xuan Anh - director
of Vietnam Earthquake Information and Tsunami Warning Center, Institute of Geophysics, Vietnam
Academy of Science and Technology (IGP-VAST) for his kind guidance and his professional commitment
during my internship project. Without his support, I would not achieve what I could have been achieved
in this project.

I am great indebted to Prof. Nguyen Hong Phuong, an expert on Earthquake and Seismology, Deputy
Director of the Vietnam Earthquake Information and Tsunami Warning Center, Institute of Geophysics,
Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. Thanks to your kind support and precious advice, your
knowledge in Earthquake and Seismic helped me construct many of the idea in this study.

I would also like to acknowledge Mr. Damien Philippon who played a key role in developing GAMA
program for his valuable recommendation and suggestions.

To USTH lecture and sta, I would like to send my big thanks to you guys for always supporting me, shar-
ing me your knowledge, especially to Ms. Phung Thi Thanh Tu for your help for all administration process.

Finally, I must express my profound gratitude to my parents and to my friends for providing me with un-
conditional support and continuous encouragement throughout my time of study and through the process
of researching and writing this report. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them.

I
II
Abstract

This Master internship report proposes dynamic models using GAMA as a foundation for an interactive
simulation between the rescuers and victims for supporting decision-making during post-Earthquake sit-
uations in urban areas. To best of my knowledge, this method has been applied to Song Chay scenario
in two districts that are Thanh Xuan and Dong Da of Hanoi, Vietnam.

The main contribution of this research is the useful application of an agent-based multi-level model-
ing system that allows modelers to simulate and evaluate dierent rescue scenarios focus on the necessary
time to rescue all victims to the hospitals. This system couples and organizes three sub-models. The
rst sub-model is the simulation of rescue work implemented by only ambulances. The second sub-model
illustrates the rescue task of volunteers while the last sub-model is combination of both ambulances and
volunteers.

In this study, the Earthquake scenarios are employed to create input information for the designed model.
The consideration of the Earthquake scenarios on the basis of dynamic modeling allows me to develop a
simulation tool for an urban emergency response process. The Earthquake risk scenarios play an impor-
tant role in providing the input information on damages and losses for these simulations, hence lead to
the improvement the realism of the simulation results. This novel research direction is perspective, which
can produce eective applications in terms of urban seismic risk management and emergency response in
the future.

Key words: GAMA, Earthquake, rescue scenario, simulation, complex models, natural disasters,
GIS, spatial data, spatial and regional information

III
IV
Contents

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Company activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Internship context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Problematic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Report organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 State of the art 5

2.1 Complex systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Agent-Based models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3 The emergency response models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3 Contribution 9
3.1 Selecting research area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.1 Features of the studied area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.2 Selection basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2 Research tools and approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2.1 Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2.2 Research tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3 Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3.1 Survey data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3.2 The GIS data given by Song Chay earthquake scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

4 Results 19
4.1 Optimize the necessary time to rescue the victims by the ambulances . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2 Optimize the necessary time to rescue the victims by the volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.3 Optimize the necessary time to rescue the victims by both the ambulances and volunteers 27

5 Conclusion 31

A Detail about GAMA 35

B The table of comparison between this internship study and the PhD research by Chu
Thanh Quang 39

C Detail contact of IGP-VAST 41

V
VI
List of Figures

1.1 Seven steps to make a model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.1 A rescue system view as a complex system with multiple interacting agents . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 An agent is an autonomous entity in a spatial environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3.1 Some examples about model in GAMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3.2 Location of two districts: Dong Da and Thanh Xuan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3 The interface of Earthquake scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4 Sellection of Song Chay Earthquake scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.5 The interface of Song Chay Earthquake scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.6 The roads and buildings are two main GIS layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.7 The road system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

4.1 Final State Machine of ambulances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4.2 Distribution of victims and hospitals in Thanh Xuan and Dong Da District of Hanoi . . . 21
4.3 The interface of the model with the scenario 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.4 The monitors of the victims state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.5 The necessary time to rescue victims by ambulances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.6 The parameter of volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.7 The map of the rescue scenario by volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.8 The necessary time to rescue victims by volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.9 Final State Machine of volunteers in the last scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.10 The map of the rescue working by both volunteers and ambulances . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.11 The parameter of volunteers and ambulances speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.12 The necessary time to rescue victims by both ambulances and volunteers . . . . . . . . . . 30

A.1 Brief history of GAMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

A.2 Architecture of GAMA platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

VII
VIII
List of Tables

3.1 The hospitals of Thanh Xuan and Dong Da district . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.2 The number of ambulances in each hospital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.3 Four levels of casualties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.1 The necessary time to save the victims by ambulances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.2 Comparison between two scenarios 1 and 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.3 The necessary time to save the victims by volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

B.1 The comparison between this internship study and the PhD research by Chu Thanh Quang 40

IX
Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Context

1.1.1 Company activities

I do my Master 1 internship at Vietnam Earthquake Information and Tsunami Warning Center, Institute
of Geophysics, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (IGP-VAST).

The Vietnam Earthquake Information and Tsunami Warning Centre under Institute of Geophysics was
established by the Decision No 1798/QD-KHCNVN of the President of Vietnam Academy of Science and
Technology, September 4, 2007.

Functions: To utilize the results of investigation and research in the eld of Physics of the Earth for
earthquake information and tsunami warning in Vietnam in accordance with the governmental regulations.

Tasks:

Observation of earthquake data, acquisition of sea level and other related information and data in
the territory and sea areas of Vietnam.

Analyzing, processing, controlling and verifying data and information on earthquakes and tsunamis
in the territory, sea areas of Vietnam and adjacent regions.

Issuing earthquakes and tsunamis warning bulletins in accordance with the governmental regula-
tions.

Cooperation with earthquake information and tsunami warning systems in the region and the World.

To carry out training and propaganda activities, to provide community with knowledge and guideline
for earthquake and tsunami preparedness and prevention.

International cooperation: Representing Vietnam as one of the member states of the Pacic Tsunami
Warning and Mitigation System (PTWS), the EITWC plays a role of a National Tsunami Warning Center
in the system and has designated Tsunami National Contact and Tsunami Focal Points for receiving infor-
mation on regional tsunami mitigation activities and tsunami alerts or advisories from the international
tsunami centers PTWC and JMA.
(Source: http://igp-vast.vn/index.php/en/organization/vietnam-earthquake-information-and-tsunami-warning-
center)

1
1.1.2 Internship context

Although agent-based models are now used in numerous application domains such as ecology, social sci-
ences, and so on, their applicability is still impeded by the lack of generic yet ready-to-use tools supporting
the design and the simulation of complex models integrating multiple levels of agency and realistic envi-
ronments. [1]

The GAMA (GIS and Agent-based Modeling Architecture) simulation platform is proposed to address
such issues. One of the advantages of GAMA is that it allows modelers to build complex models thanks
to high-level modeling language, various agent architectures and advanced environment representations
combined with built-in multi-level support. [1]

Recently, one of the most important tasks in seismic science which has not been solved thoroughly is how
to have an accurate prediction for extreme catastrophes. Being contrast to other natural calamities like
tornado, ood, etc. earthquake is a natural phenomenon that arrives suddenly and causes huge damage.
At the moment, scientic technology permits to detect an earthquake and calculate its power 3-5 minutes
before it happens. That is the reason why every country in the world including developed countries may
not avoid such damage and loss from earthquakes. At the time of natural disasters, the damages seriously
aect living conditions (collapsed buildings, destroyed roads, lack of hygiene, developing of diseases...),
and thus the number of victims does not cease to increase. Preceding disasters show that in developing
countries, it is unlikely that local people can confront this kind of catastrophe. The damage and loss of
life caused by the most recent earthquake in New Zealand (happened on February 22nd 2011 Christchurch
earthquake M6.3) and in Japan (caused by the Tohoku tsunami on March 11 2011, M8.9) are such ex-
amples. The loss of lives is the biggest issue that every country having earthquake frequently is concerned.

To mitigate such losses, rescue after earthquake gets more attention and concerns from governments
and scientists. In order to do so, it would be extremely helpful to build a realistic model, which can be
very dicult and expensive. Hence, my study with the title: Initiation of learning GAMA to service
simulated rescue scenarios of urban earthquake, applied to Thanh Xuan and Dong Da district, Hanoi aims
to contribute to ll this gap by studying and developing a simulation rescue model on GAMA platform,
which will be applied in Thanh Xuan and Dong Da district, Hanoi. This simulation will help guiding how
to rescue victims in the most optimal way and how to reduce the loss of lives when earthquake happens.

This study is the rst step to learn GAMA platform, use GIS data as GAMA inputs and simulate
rescue scenarios of urban earthquake.

1.2 Problematic

Vietnam is located between two of the greatest seismic belts of the planet: the Mediterranean-Himalayan
and Pacic belt. The country regularly suers from the activities of these belts. Its complex geological
structure, associated with strong tectonic movements, make this territory a high seismic area, although
the seismic hazard is less important than in the countries situated directly on the seismic. This type of
natural disaster, although rare, cannot, however, be neglected, as the preparedness of the country to such
events is critically low.

In Vietnam's history, many earthquakes of intensity up to 9 degrees (following MM, MSK-64 scales)
occurred and caused great damage on buildings and human life. From 1900 to 1992, two earthquakes
with an intensity between 8 and 9 (M = 6.7 - 6.8) and more than twenty earthquakes with intensity 7(A10
=5.0-5.6) have been recorded [2]. The application of the theory of extreme values (i.e. the rst and third

2
Gumbel's asymptotic distributions [3]) to the data taken from the earthquake catalogues of Vietnam for
the period 1903-1988 [4] leads to some predictions: The highest value of the maximum earthquake magni-
tude (Mmax = 7.0) is predicted for the Ma river source zone and for the whole northern part of Vietnam,
within a return period of 123 years. For Northern Vietnam, the probability of earthquakes occurrence
with magnitudes greater than 5.0 for the same time interval is about 80%.

In addition, the rapid urbanization of the country shapes disaster risks through a complex association
of concentrated populations, social exclusion and poverty compounded by physical vulnerability. As a
consequence, in large cities like Hanoi, the uncontrolled dynamics of urbanization (accelerated conversion
of agricultural land, densication of villages on the urban peripheries and further overcrowding through-
out the inner city areas as commercial urban renewal displaces the former residents) create diculties
to maintain an accurate overview of the organization of the city and to intervene eciently in case of
disasters. It has been the case in Hanoi for the 1983 earthquake [5]. Earthquake threats usually appear
in places of high seismic activities and become catastrophic when these places are at the same time ur-
ban or industrial areas. In Vietnam, despite events of magnitude greater than 6.7 that have occurred in
the northwestern part of the country, earthquakes have never been recognized as a disaster with highest
priority. To some extent, earthquakes that occurred in Vietnam up to now are not devastating because
their epicenters were located far from urban or industrial areas. Nevertheless, the earthquake risk exists
and cannot be ignored, especially for many vulnerable areas of the country as the territory of Northern
Vietnam, the coastal zones of Central Vietnam and the southeastern continental shelf of Vietnam. For
such areas, the assessment of earthquake risk, and the training of specialized personnel, is important to
help community in managing risks and reducing potential losses [5].

According to this situation, victim rescue activities after the disasters are always problematic in the
world and Vietnam is not an exception. Because the reality is that even with the frequently occurring
earthquake country, rescue activities are still conducted very slowly and make many victims died in unjust
way, while many others had not been rescued on time leading to the death. Therefore, the "against the
clock", or in other words how will rescue work be taken place quickly and in less time? How to reduce the
rescue needed time, avoid wasting time in the rescue work after the earthquakes are the problems that
need to be noticed!

Building the rescue models is proposed to address such issues in this study. However, creating a modeling
is not simple even complex because it is a multi-step cycle.

Figure 1.1: Seven steps to make a model

Every model has to start from a clear question. Therefore, we need to rstly understand the models that
we want to implement to give the clear questions of the models. The problematic is we cannot tackle

3
the same questions with all kinds of models, so we have to think a lot of the clear questions to ask the
model. Then, we have to identify the elements to the model to collect the relevant data. Collection of
data is an extremely dicult task, we have to spend lots of time and eort. Furthermore, when we even
spend a lot of eort and the time to collect the data, it is not probable that we will get the data that we
want. For example, in this study, I had to go to each hospital to collect the data of ambulances, but there
was still some hospitals that did not want to give me such data. On the other side, the data have to be
cleaned and processed depending on the aim and need of the model. This work requires you have to know
many kinds of dierent techniques and tools. After nishing the data collection, we continue to dene
the agents, implement, calibrate and explore the model. If the model does not run or has the errors, we
need to go back the step 1. The errors are part of the implementation. The exploration can make us see
something interesting on which we want to focus more and that is why we go to step 1, to redene the
modeling question on the interesting fact and work more on it.

1.3 Report organization

This internship report is divided into 5 chapters.

Chapter 1: Introduction to the laboratory in which I have done my internship, context of the intern-
ship as well as the problematic.

Chapter 2: A bibliography relating information of some projects in relation to the internship project.

Chapter 3: Contributions of some proposition to solve the problematic presented in the chapter 1.

Chapter 4: Description of three earthquake rescue scenarios to be implemented into a simulation tool
during the internship together with gures, tables and comments of the results.

Chapter 5: Conclusions that illustrate some perspectives of the works.

4
Chapter 2

State of the art

This chapter will reect the important relevant knowledge in this study. The chapter also demonstrates
relevant concepts that were concerns in the introduction chapter such as complex systems, Multi-agent
System, Multi-level Agent-Based modeling and Spatial decision support system for rescue. Besides, this
chapter will describe some literature reviews on the simulations that have been of interests in recent years
by many researchers in the world.

There are many Agent-Based models have been published, and this internship report applied these models
for the urban earthquake rescue models on the road network of two districts in Hanoi, Vietnam because
the rescue the victims after the earthquake problem in the urban is as complex system. Moreover, in
the review about rescue models, this chapter will investigate deeply a model that presented by Dr. Chu
Thanh Quang in 2011, as well as make some comparions with his research in the dierent views. However,
we will nd some concepts rst. Firsly, the denition of this complex systems and the reason why these
systems should be studied were indicaded.

2.1 Complex systems

The world-known Physicist Stephen Hawking said that: I think the next century will be the century of
complexity .Indeed, complex systems are found in many elds ranging through social systems, global
climate, economies, ant colonies, immune systems, crowd movement to disaster management system and
so on. . .

In spite of the fact that there are a lot of denitions of the complex system, there is no particular
denition for all elds. Some of the denitions that has been found widely popular are: Ali A. BarYam et
al [6]dened in 2006 "Complex systems are systems with multiple interacting components whose behavior
cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of the components". In 2012, S. Grauwin et al [7] dened
"A system is a complex system if it is made of many interacting elements and if the dynamics of these
interactions govern the behavior of the system, giving it a unity appearance from the point of view of an
external observer".

Obviously, complex systems relate to all elds of science, as well as engineering, management, and
medicine, etc. In such systems, the components and the interactions between them often lead to large-
scale behaviors which are not easily predicted from knowledge only of the behavior of the individual agents.

In this report, we consider rescue systems as complex systems because the systems are composed of
many agents such as victims ambulances, destroyed building, volunteers, hospitals, disaster managers. . .
(Figure.2.1). Therefore, these systems need to be studied with various behaviors for dierent agents.

5
Moreover, the behaviors of these systems are targeted at our research on urban earthquake rescue sys-
tems.

Figure 2.1: A rescue system view as a complex system with multiple interacting agents

2.2 Agent-Based models

Historically, the complexity of scientic models was often limited by mathematical tractability: when
dierential calculus was the only approach we had for modeling, we had to keep models simple enough
to solve mathematically and so, unfortunately, we were often limited to modeling quite simple problems.

With computer simulation, the limitation of mathematical tractability is removed so we can start ad-
dressing problems that require models that are less simplied and include more characteristics of the real
systems. Agent-Based models are less simplied in one specic and important way: they represent a
system's individual components and their behaviors. Instead of describing a system only with variables
representing the state of the whole system, we model its individual agents.

Figure 2.2: An agent is an autonomous entity in a spatial environment.

The Figure 2.2 shows skills of agents to achieve its goals and tendencies together with many character-
istics such as autonomy, communication, interactions, actions, perception, reactivity, sociality, initiative,
cooperation, and intelligence.

6
Kaiser (1979) and Huston, DeAngelis, and Post (1988) dened Individual-Based models (IBMs) as mod-
els that describe individuals as discrete and autonomous entities, but they did not precisely distinguish
IBMs from classical models. The rst and frequently cited volume about IBMs, entitled Individual-based
models and approaches in ecology (DeAngelis and Gross 1992) [8], also does not clearly delineate what
an IBM is. The models considered in this volume range from IBMs as dened by Kaiser and Huston et
al., to analytical models dealing with distributions of individual properties instead of discrete entities,
to cellular automata that do not necessarily describe individuals at all. By the middle of the 1990s,
the term individual-based had become so fuzzy that it became increasingly dicult to tell if IBMs
really had the potential to unify ecological theory and to overcome the limitations of classical modeling
approaches. Therefore, Uchmanski and Grimm (1996) proposed four criteria that distinguish what we
consider IBMs in this book, those reecting the research programs of the IBM pioneers, from other more
or less individual-oriented models that acknowledge the individual level in some way but still adhere
mainly to the classical modeling paradigm. [9]

Agent-based modeling (ABM) is no longer a completely new approach, but it still oers many excit-
ing new ways to look at old problems and lets us study many new problems. In fact, the use of ABMs is
even more exciting now that the approach has matured: the worst mistakes have been made and corrected,
agent-based approaches are no longer considered radical and suspicious, and we have convenient tools for
building models. People like you are positioned to take advantage of what the pioneers have learned and
the tools they built, and to get directly to work on interesting problems.

2.3 The emergency response models

A number of disaster response systems have been developed and are being developed (e.g. DrillSim,
DEFACTO, ALADDIN, ResQ Freiburg, FireGrid, PLAN C, Damas Rescue). All of these systems are
based on agent-based models. Some of them address specic problems, like the re evacuation problem,
or focus on search and rescue, public health or medical relief operations. These systems play the role of
Decision Support Systems (DSSs) to help human actors (e.g. rst responders, managers, public) to work
together, in planning and determining the resources to use [10].

The following section is the comparison of an emergency response model with the model that is pro-
posed in this study and analyzed them with respecting to the study goals.

A PhD research of Chu Thanh Quang successfully defended in 2011 entitled: "Agent-based models and
machine learning to enhance spatial decision support systems" is on the development of a spatial decision
support system to train and support people in dealing with the vital problem of resource allocation for
disaster response activities in urban areas. The goal of the study is to design a method that combines
agent-based models, geographical information systems, participatory design and machine learning to ad-
dress three points: (1) building rescue simulations that integrate all available information and behaviors;
(2) enabling stakeholders (e.g. responders, practitioners, managers, experts in emergency) to interact
directly with the agents of the simulation in order to teach them "relevant" behaviors; (3) designing a
learning mechanism to acquire these behaviors through an automated, online and interactive way, and
to eectively translate the knowledge and experience that stakeholders use in organizing rescue missions
into agents behaviors. [11]

There are many common threads between his research and this study. The rst is to improve the (simu-
lated) eectiveness of rescue activities and make the simulation model more realistic. The second is the
result that will help stakeholders to acquire a better understanding of rescue issues and become more

7
experienced in emergency response. The last is using GAMA platform to simulate the model.

However, Chu Thanh Quang's research had a combination with specic Machine Learning techniques,
to acquire the experts' preferences during participatory simulations and allow rescue agents to interact
with experts and capture automatically their preferences. Besides, the results of his models oered many
evaluation criteria such as the time to complete rescue, the number of dead victims, the number of ex-
changed messages, the number of conicting actions. . . In this study, I just focus on the necessary time to
rescue. Moreover, there are two kinds of rescue forces in this model that are ambulances and volunteers.
While in his research, there are many sorts of rescuer forces: polices, ambulances, remen. . . The other
dierent point between two studies is the number of victims and rescue forces. Chu Thanh Quang changed
the number of victims to make some comparisons, but he did not change the number of rescue forces.
While this internship study keeps the number of victims xed (88 victims) during the simulation and
change the number of ambulances and volunteers. The study areas are also dierent. This study applies
the models to 2 districts Dong Da and Thanh Xuan, while the PhD research focused on only Ba Dinh
district.

8
Chapter 3

Contribution

Over the past decade, there has been a striking increase in the use of agent-based models to study com-
plex systems. This booming is partly due to the success of several software platforms that have reached a
level of maturity supporting the development and simulation of agent-based models (Netlogo [12], Repast
[13]. . . etc.). However, even with these platforms, the problem of the model design is still an open issue.
Indeed, whereas some platforms such as Netlogo provide a dedicated modeling language to ease the model
design, they are quite limited when dealing with rich models relying on GIS data. Other platforms or
toolboxes such as Repast, that allow us to build richer models are very complex to use and requires strong
computer science skills. Consequently, eld experts have to rely on computer scientists to develop models
which slow the development and the use of realistic agent-based models. [1]

In this study, GAMA modeling and simulation platform are proposed to address the shortcomings as
well as the problematic explained in the introduction chapter. Besides, the input information on dam-
ages and losses for these simulations are the earthquake risk scenarios and statistics about the number of
hospitals and ambulances of two districts in Hanoi.

GAMA is a modeling and simulation development environment for building spatially explicit agent-based
simulations (https://github.com/gama-platform/gama/wiki)

Multiple application domains: Use GAMA for whatever application domain you want

High-level and Intuitive Agent-based language: Write your models easily using GAML, a high-level
and intuitive agent-based language.

GIS and Data-Driven models: Instantiate agents from any dataset, including GIS data, and execute
large-scale simulations (up to millions of agents)

Declarative user interface: Declare interfaces supporting deep inspections on agents, user-controlled
action panels, multi-layer 2D/3D displays agent aspects

The rst contribution of my study is the management of GIS data in shapele format and the integration
of multiple-layers GIS to establish a GIS-based environment for agent-based simulations. With these
facilities, modelers just need to describe some parameters related to each shapele, and GAMA loads all
the objects present in the GIS les and automatically instantiates either agents or environments for the
simulations.

9
 Figure 3.1: Some examples about model in GAMA

3.1 Selecting research area

3.1.1 Features of the studied area

1. Thanh Xuan District

Thanh Xuan is a district of Hanoi, capital of Vietnam located at the gateway to the West of
Hanoi. The district was established on 22nd November, 1996.

Geography:
Headquarter: No. 09 Khuat Duy Tien, Thanh Xuan Bac
Location: Southwest Hanoi
Acreage: 911 km2
Number of wards: 11 Wards

Population:
Population: 259,355 people (statistics in 2010)
Density:18,990 persons/ km2
Ethnic groups: mainly Kinh

Contact infomation:
Phone: 04.3858.5646 Fax: 04.3858.5631
Website: www.thanhxuan.gov.vn

2. Dong Da District

Dong Da is a district in the heart of the capital, Hanoi.

Geography:
Headquarter: 279 Ton Duc Thang Street, Hang Bot Ward
Location: Central Hanoi
Acreage: 996 km2
Number of wards: 21 Wards

10
 Population:
Population: 352,000 people (statistics in 2010)
Density: 35,341 persons/ km2
Ethnic groups: mainly Kinh ethinic

Contact Infomation:
Phone: 04.3851.3524 Fax: 04.3851.1321
Website: www.dongda.hanoi.gov.vn

3.1.2 Selection basis

It is clear that general data in Vietnam that are very scarce and lack of uniformity, continuity and accu-
racy, especially the earthquake data. Earthquake is a devastating catastrophe, but it has never happened
strongly in Vietnam. Therefore, the earthquake data are very rare. Studies as well as surveys and data
collection related to earthquakes do not attract to get the detailed, dense and voluminous gures.

Because of the scarcity and lack of such data, the author chooses Thanh Xuan and Dong Da district
which are two small districts of Hanoi for this study. One of the advantages of doing research in this small
scale is that one can collect the data more easily.

Figure 3.2: Location of two districts: Dong Da and Thanh Xuan

11
3.2 Research tools and approaches

3.2.1 Approaches

The approach of the subject is a rational process, incorporating the an exploration of the history and
development of GAMA simulation tools to collect information and data about the study area and objects,
followed by the application of GIS technology to build and simulate rescue scenarios in an urban area of
Hanoi when the earthquake occurred and caused damage to people and buildings.

3.2.2 Research tools

Investigating and surveying, statistic of GIS data at Dong Da and Thanh Xuan District as input data
into the model in GAMA

Using QGIS tools to standardize data properties and space and the built environment for simulation
inputs rescue scenarios. I used QGIS tool not ArcGIS tool because QGIS is a cross-platform free and
open-source desktop geographic information system (GIS) application while ArcGIS is not open source.

Using GAML programming language to build component modules and multi-element models to simu-
late urban earthquake rescue scenarios in Hanoi on GAMA environment

3.3 Database

The input data of the model includes: the data of hospital, ambulance, volunteer, victim, building, road,
district....Most of the data comes from Song Chay Earthquake scenario in shapele format (destroyed
buildings, districts, victims...), and some other survey data.

3.3.1 Survey data

Hospital data

The hospital data at Thanh Xuan and Dong Da district were surveyed as following:

In this study, the author focuses on the hospitals, and omits health centers, because the healthcare
centers have no ambulance. Therefore, Thanh Xuan district has only one hospital.

Regarding Dong Da district, the number of hospitals here is much more than Thanh Xuan dis-
trict. And in total, two districts have 13 hospitals.

However with identical hospital addresses, to be convenient to simulate, author lumped them to-
gether to be the same hospital (for example Tai Mui Hng T hospital, National Institute of Mental
Health, Hanoi Heart hospital, National hospital of tropical diseases and Bch Mai hospital). After
arranging these hospitals, the model has only 09 hospitals with dierent addresses.

12
 Table 3.1: The hospitals of Thanh Xuan and Dong Da district

No Hospital name Address

1 Dong Da hospital 192 Nguyen Luong Bang, Dong Da
2 Transport hospital 1194 Lang Street, Dong Da
3 Bach Mai hospital 78 Giai Phong Street
4 Hanoi Medical University hospital No 1 Ton That Tung, Dong Da
5 Tai Mui Hong T hospital 78 Giai Phong Street
6 National Hospital of Endocrinology 80 Yen Lang, Thai Thinh
7 National Children hospital 18/879 La Thanh Street, Dong Da
8 National hospital of acupuncture 49 Thai Thinh, Dong Da
9 L'Hpital Francais de Hanoi 1 Phuong Mai, Dong Da
10 Vietnam National Institute of Gerontology 1 Phuong Mai, Dong Da
11 National Institute of Mental Health 78 Giai Phong Street
12 Hanoi Heart hospital 78 Giai Phong Street
13 National hospital of tropical diseases 78 Giai Phong Street

Ambulance data

About the ambulance data, the author has collected by these ways: searching online, looking through
the statistical yearbooks, going to every hospital in the district, as well as contacating the hospital
... Finally, the author also obtains the ambulance data at the hospital in Dong Da and Thanh Xuan
district as follows:

Table 3.2: The number of ambulances in each hospital

No Hospital name District The number of Ambulances

1 Xay Dung hospital Thanh Xuan 01
2 Transport hospital Dong Da 02
3 Bach Mai hospital Dong Da No Data
4 Hanoi Medical University hospital Dong Da No data
5 Noi Tiet hospital Dong Da No data
6 National Children hospital Dong Da No data
7 National Hospital of acupuncture Dong Da 01
8 L'Hpital Francais de Hanoi Dong Da 01
9 Dong Da hospital Dong Da No data

With this status of the ambulance data, the author conducts some simulation according to the
collected data. If the hospitals have the ambulance data, the ambulance will be provided from the
hospital to go to the location of victims and take them to the nearest hospital. The hospital which
has no data of the ambulances will be as one of the victim targets where the victims will be taken
to by the ambulances.

13
3.3.2 The GIS data given by Song Chay earthquake scenario

During the last years, the use of GIS technology has signicantly accelerated the research on earthquakes.
GIS provides a powerful tool for solving specic and sophisticated problems in seismology. GIS applica-
tions allow users to display outputs and see the eects of dierent earthquake scenarios and then make
sound decisions. For example, [5] developed a GIS-based Decision Support System in earthquake risk
assessment and loss estimation for the areas vulnerable to earthquake threat in Vietnam [11].

This Decision Support System has been recently developed and tested for the urban area of Hanoi [14],
[5]. Its principle is simple: rst, the user is asked for a study region. Then, he/she can choose a scenario
of earthquake based on predened magnitude and location. On the basis of existing data and knowledge
on seismicity, seismotectonics and ground conditions, various methods are applied to assess the ground
motion of the study region. The results of this assessment, also called the seismic hazard of the region,
are used as an input for the next stage, where the ground failure is assessed. Finally, data on vulnerability
such as census tracks, population density, land use and infrastructures (buildings, transportation, lifelines
etc.) are combined with the ground failure data to estimate loss and damage caused by the earthquake
scenario in the study region.

The gure below shows the interface of Earthquake scenarios in Hanoi. And in this project, I choose
the results of Song Chay earthquake scenario as an input of the agent-based model of rescue activities.

Figure 3.3: The interface of Earthquake scenarios

14
 Figure 3.4: Sellection of Song Chay Earthquake scenario

Figure 3.5: The interface of Song Chay Earthquake scenario

Structural damage caused by an earthquake is assessed for 16 common models building types, classied
according to their construction material and building height. For each of these types, damage is described
by ve states: none, slight, moderate, extensive and complete. The system calculates the damage state
probabilities for each type, and the results are used for the estimation of casualties. However, the system
considers only the immediate casualties due to damaged or collapsed buildings. Casualties are estimated

15
by four levels of injury severity and at three times of the day: nighttime, daytime and commute time.

Victim data

Human damage, caused by the earthquake, is determined by the number of victims and quanti-
ed by four levels of casualties as follows:

Table 3.3: Four levels of casualties

Extent of casualties Description of casualties

Level 1 Casualties need of medical assistance, but do not require hospitalization
Casualties require the medical care at higher extent or maybe have to
Level 2
go to the hospital, but do not threaten to their life
Casualties have threatened to their life unless timely rescue. Most of the
Level 3
casualties are the results of the shedding building or trapped victims
Level 4 Died instantly

In this study, the author use data at level 3 and at 2am. The author gives such a choice because
level 3 is the level of casualties which can tell us the life of threatening cases, so the rescuers will
play a very important role, but at the level 1 or level 2, the victims can aid in that place before,
and at level 4, the victims were killed, the role of rescuer will not be really necessary. The author
chooses the data at the term of the time at 02 am, because the majority of citizens stay at home at
this time, therefore the probability of damages is the bigger than other times.

From the report of Song Chay Earthquake scenario given by the Vietnam Earthquake Informa-
tion and Tsunami Warning Center, the number of victims in two districts Thanh Xuan and Dong
Da at level 3 are 37 victims and 51 victims respectively, in total 88 victims.

Road and building data

I built the model of rescue activities by using the framework data of the Thanh Xuan and Dong
Da district of Hanoi. The roads and buildings are two main GIS layers constituting the urban
environment of the model. Regarding the availability of data, the GIS layers produced by the loss
estimation system are saved in an open le format (shapeles).

I conduct the model within three rescue scenarios as following:

1. Simulation the rescue activity of ambulances

2. Simulation the rescue activity of volunteers
3. Simulation the rescue activity in combination of ambulances and volunteers

In the rst rescue scenario, the road was assumed not to be destroyed by the earthquake, the am-
bulances can pass on the road. Of course, this is not practical, and simulation results are only the
express meaning of the rescue work after the earthquake.

16
 Figure 3.6: The roads and buildings are two main GIS layers

In order to do the rescue scenarios which are more realistic, the road data is extremely impor-
tant.

There is a fact that in the country had strong earthquake, the rescue work is mainly from the
volunteer force, patrols, maneuvers ... They mostly walk and stretcher injured. Based on that mat-
ter of fact, it would be perfectly possible to simulate a dierent rescue scenarios on the assumption
that some paths of the road have been destroyed, and only walking forces can take part in the rescue
work. That is the idea of the second scenario.

The gure below illustrates the road within the paths destroyed by the Earthquake (the red line).

Figure 3.7: The road system

17
 However, the last scenario was needed because in the cases of Earthquake, the road can not be
totally destroyed. Some road paths can be still used for ambulances working, therefore, the last
scenario was determined.

Shortly, the road data is managed depend on the aim of the dierent scenarios.

Volunteer data

The number of volunteers is a parameter that input into the model. Initially, I choose 10 vol-
unteers and the location of each volunteer is random in the model. Then, I increase the number of
volunteers to 11, 12, 13. . . 18 to see the change of the simulations as well as make some comparisons
between them.

18
Chapter 4

Results

In order to optimize the necessary time to rescue after the Earthquake, this study will focus on nding
the answers for three questions:

1. Should we increase the number of ambulances in the hospitals?

2. Should we just focus on training rescue activities for citizens?

3. Should we combine two solutions above together (i.e we will increase the number of ambulances in
the hospitals and at the same time take the training activities for the citizens)?

Three questions above are also three scenarios rescue respectively that will be demonstrated in this chapter.

In the model, the common data is used is as follows:

Scope: Thanh Xuan and Dong Da district, Hanoi, Vietnam

The number of hospitals in two districts: 09 hospitals

The number of victims at level 3 (the life of injured had been threatening if they don't have the
timely rescue. Most of the casualties are the result of destroying these buildings or trapping and
being exhausted of the victims): 88 people

The magnitude of Chay river earthquake scenario: 6.6

4.1 Optimize the necessary time to rescue the victims by the ambu-
lances

Problem: The rescue of earthquake victims is very important, especially the issue of the time. How to
make the process to work as quickly as possible? This is still the problem which many countries around
the world have concerned, especially those countries often suer from strong earthquakes. This scenario
will estimate the necessary time to rescue victims of the earthquake by the ambulances applied for Thanh
Xuan District - Dong Da, Hanoi.

Purpose: Simulating the process of rescuing the victims after the earthquake to estimate the needed
time of rescue. From there, we can change the number of ambulances that involve in the rescue work to
give some comparisons and also give a decision support: should we increase the number of ambulances in
the hospital?

Describe the rescue scenario: When an earthquake occurred, the ambulances from the hospital will
go to the location of victims to bring them to the closest hospital. When the ambulance brought all

19
victims to the hospital, the process of rescuse will end.

Figure 4.1: Final State Machine of ambulances

In this scenario, we assume that the victims will be saved by only the ambulances and the ambulances
can pass on the road. The number of ambulances at the initial are 5. This is real data that are collected
by going to each hospital in two districts and ask them. However, there are many dierent reasons that
the hospital did not want to give the information of ambulance. Therefore, we just have the data of
ambulance at 4 per 9 hospitals.

The average velocity of the ambulance in the model is created as a parameter, at the initial is 20km/h.
We can change this value if we want to change the speed of the ambulance.

Simulation results:

Figure 4.2: Distribution of victims and hospitals in Thanh Xuan and Dong Da District of Hanoi

20
The gure above is the distribution of the location of hospitals (the green icon) as well as the victims
that need to be saved (orange dots) by ambulances (the ambulance icon) in Thanh Xuan and Dong Da
district. As above, we can realize that Thanh Xuan district has only one hospital is Xay Dung hospital
and Dong Da district has 09 hospitals.

Figure 4.3: The interface of the model with the scenario 1

After the model nnish running, the victims were taken to the hospital by the ambulances. We can see
on the gure, do not appear the orange dots on the map of two districts. We also see on the right of the
map, there is no victim need to save or being saved, there are 88 victims saved.

Figure 4.4: The monitors of the victims state

The required time for 05 ambulances brought 88 victims to 09 hospitals was 14673 seconds or 04 hours
04 minutes 33 seconds.

In brief, in order to save all victims at level 3 (88 victims) after the earthquake with magnitude is 6.6 and
05 ambulances (speed is about 20km/h), it takes 04 hours 04 minutes 33 seconds.

21
 Figure 4.5: The necessary time to rescue victims by ambulances

In many cases, supposedly these victims will survive if the rescue work had been prepared faster and
more carefully. One of the eects for rescuing quickly, it is increasing rescuers. However, this issue de-
pends on the expense and the budget of each country. All people also know that we should increase
(for example increase the number of ambulance in the hospital), but how to increase, and how many is
enough? The following presentations will give us the answer.

In the model, we can change the number of ambulances to see other results of needed time to rescue
the victims. Below will be the results of 6, 7 and 8 ambulances.

Table 4.1: The necessary time to save the victims by ambulances

The number of The needed time to rescue the victims The time faster than
ambulances In seconds In hours using 5 ambulances
5 14673s 04h 04m 33s (in seconds)
6 12697s 03h 31m 37s 1976s
7 11298s 03h 08m 18s 3375s
8 9265s 02h 34m 25s 5408s

The table shows the required time to save people when we increase the number of ambulances in the
hospital. We can see when adding more 01 ambulance up to 6 ambulances, the time to rescue has de-
creased about 1976 seconds ( 0.54 hours). When adding more 2 ambulances up to 7 ambulances, the time
needed declined by 3375 seconds ( 0.93 hours). When adding more 3 ambulances up to 8 ambulances, the
required time declined by 5408 seconds ( 1.5 hours).

From this comparisons, it is clear that if we invest more ambulances for the hospitals, the required
time to save victims will get faster. However, there are many dierent types of ambulances correspond-
ing to dierent prices. Therefore, deciding whether to invest more ambulances to hospitals or not, the
government should also consider the eect that it will give us? The results of this scenario is just as a
reference for the authorities to make a decision.

However, the results above just only tell us the necessary time in ideal conditions without other practical
conditions, such as:

The incidents of losting phone signals, radio waves or the media are not able to operate immediately
after the earthquake. Usually in other developing countries, they have to take at least 01 days to
recover the signal.

There will be the parts of the road destroyed by the building collapsed, so the ambulances would
not be able to pass along such roads. In this scenario, we are hypothesizing the ambulance can pass
along all parts of the road.

When an earthquake occurs, almost rescuers will be the volunteers, because at that time almost

22
 vehicles can not move through. And of course, the velocity of the volunteers is smaller than 20km
/ h. In that case, the necessary time for rescue activities will take more time than the amount of
time that the models estimated in this scenario.

There are also other conditions that impact the rescue time that the rescue activities will not be early
as the time that the model estimated. Moreover, this is only the scenario simulated with earthquake
magnitude is 6.6, when the earthquakes with higher magnitude would occur, for example 9.1, the
number of victims need to be rescued will not just stop at 88 people, and the rescue time does not
denitely stop at only 4 hours 4 minutes 33 seconds.

When conducting any simulations in general, and earthquake rescue in particular, in order to simulate
the problem in more details and more realistic, it would require great time and eorts. However, the
simulation does not necessarily have to get all data, or be really close to reality, sometimes it is just
hypothesis based on reality and based on empirical data which the author collected in the framework of
the research project, and from the simulation results, although it is not entirely realistic, but it would still
give the hint, and the basic evaluation to help managers have more references to oer their alternatives
or decisions for each situation. Truly, it is the meaning of this simulation work.

However, in the presentation below, the author also simulate some dierent scenarios to make the meaning
of the simulating application into realistic problems more clearly, as well as conrms one thing, there is no
any model which is better than other model. It is important for us to make the model that aims to answer
what questions. Because each model will be the answer for each question that the problem requires.

4.2 Optimize the necessary time to rescue the victims by the volunteers

Problem: The fact that when the earthquake occurs, most of the rescuers would be volunteers, they
move to where the victims are and take the victims out of distress. Because after the earthquake, most
of the buildings would collapse, the road will be hidden by the other obstacles, which make other rescue
forces can hardly access and rescue the victims (for example: the ambulances can't pass along the de-
stroyed road...). Using the volunteers in the model will make the simulations more realistic. Therefore,
this scenario will estimate the necessary time to rescue victims of the earthquake by the volunteers.

Purpose: Simulating the process of rescuing the victims after the earthquake to estimate the needed
time of rescue. From there, we can change the number of volunteers that involve in the rescue work to give
some comparisons and also shed the light for making decision: Should we just focus on training activities
for citizens?

Describe the rescue scenario: When an earthquake occurred, the volunteers from any location will
come to the place where has victims to bring them to the closest hospital. When the ambulance bring all
victims to the hospital, the process of rescuse will end.

In this scenario, we assume that the victims will be saved by only the volunteers and the road in this
scenario included the paths that was destroyed caused by the destroyed building after the Earthquake.
The number of volunteers at the initial set up in the model are 10 with average velocity is 5km/h. These
are the parameters which we can change.

Simulation results:

23
 Figure 4.6: The parameter of volunteers

There is a dierent point of the road in this scenario that is destroyed road (the red line in gure).
The volunteers can go to this place to rescue the victims. Below is the map that show the process of
rescue work by volunteers.

Figure 4.7: The map of the rescue scenario by volunteers

Looking at the gure above we can see that the orange dots are the location of the victims who need to
be rescued, the green icons are the position of the hospitals. The hand icon is the volunteer.

When we run the model, we get the necessary time to rescue 88 victims to 09 hospitals by 10 volun-
teers with their speed 5km/h is 26880 seconds, or 07 hours 28 minutes.

Figure 4.8: The necessary time to rescue victims by volunteers

24
From there, we can make a small comparison between two scenarios:

Table 4.2: Comparison between two scenarios 1 and 2

Needed time to rescue
Scenario Describe of scenario
In seconds In hours
1 Rescue by 05 ambulances with speed 20km/h 14673s 04h 04m 33s
2 Rescue by 10 volunteers with speed 5km/h 26880s 07h 28m

It is clear that, the necessary time to rescue victims by ambulances is faster than volunteers in the similar
conditions. How many volunteers are needed to get the same rescue time as 05 ambulances. We will
change the number of volunteers in the model to nd the answer.

Table 4.3: The necessary time to save the victims by volunteers

The number of The necessary time to rescue the victims The time faster than
volunteers In seconds In hours using 10 volunteers
10 26880s 07h 28m (in seconds)
11 23220s 06h 27m 3660s
12 21180s 05h 53m 5700s
13 19620s 05h 27m 7260s
14 19200s 05h 20m 7680s
15 18480s 05h 08m 8400s
16 16860s 04h 41m 10020s
17 13860s 03h 51m 13020s

As the table above, we can see 17 volunteers will get the similar time with 05 ambulances. From this
result, the government continues to have one more suggestion to make a decision in investing for the res-
cue activities after the Earthquake. The government might think about many factors to make a decision,
but the element of the budget for additional investments of ambulances or investing to the training of
volunteers is also an important factor.

In this scenario, we also omit some conditions such as:

Losing the signal of the phone and internet...

The time to dig or move rubbles to nd the victims

In the real life, we would need not only one volunteer to rescue one victim, a victim should be saved
by more than one volunteer. In this scenario, we assumed that only one volunteer is needed to save
a victim

However, like the rst scenario, this result aims to give the overview and the orientations to help managers
have more references to oer their alternatives or decisions for the rescue activities after the Earthquake.

25
4.3 Optimize the necessary time to rescue the victims by both the am-
bulances and volunteers

Problem: The fact that when the earthquake occurs, there will be dierent types of rescue forces joining
the rescue process. Because the ambulances can run faster than volunteers, they will move on paths
without destruction and the volunteers will move on destroyed paths. This scenario will estimate the
necessary time to rescue victims after the earthquake by both ambulances and volunteers.

Purpose: Simulating the combination of the process of rescuing the victims after the earthquake between
volunteers and ambulances to estimate the necessary time. From there, we can make comparisons and
also give a decision support: Should we combine two solutions above together? It means combination of
both rising the number of ambulances in the hospitals and take the training activities for the citizens.

Describe the rescue scenario: After the earthquake occurred, the volunteers from any location will
come to destroyed paths to bring the victims to the roads that have not been destroyed or to the closest
hospital if the distance to the hospital is shorter. The ambulances will move on the undestroyed road
and save the victims to hospitals including the victims that have been moved to accessed paths by. The
process will nish when all victims are rescued and transfered to hospitals.

Figure 4.9: Final State Machine of volunteers in the last scenario

Simulation results:
During this scenario, we set the average speed of the ambulance at 20km/h (05 ambulances) while moving
speed of volunteers (10 volunteers) is 5km/h. With such speed, the rescuers take 18300 seconds or 05
hours 05 minutes to bring all the victims to the hospital.

Normally, the necessary time to save all victims to hospitals in this scenario should be smaller than two
scenarios above. However, we can see the necessary time in this scenarios is shorter than the second
scenarios but longer than the rst scenario. This result is because of the setting of initial conditions that
we assumed in the rst scenario that there is no destroyed road in the model. However, this assumption
makes the model a little confused.

26
 Figure 4.10: The map of the rescue working by both volunteers and ambulances

Figure 4.11: The parameter of volunteers and ambulances speed

Figure 4.12: The necessary time to rescue victims by both ambulances and volunteers

This simulation gets more realistic (roads may be damaged due to earthquakes that ambulances can-
not pass). It also has demonstrated the ability to simulate complex scenarios of GAMA.

Therefore in this simulation, we can see that the combination of both ambulances and volunteers is
the best choice since ambulances are faster than volunteers but volunteers are able to access areas that
ambulances cannot because of blocked roads with destructions. Thus, this scenario would be the most
prefeered strategy for governers and decision makers for the rescue activities after the Earthquake.

27
28
Chapter 5

Conclusion

Natural disaster management in urban areas is an extremely complex problem. In this context, the author
has been interested in the use of information technology, GIS and multi-agent simulation tools to address
the vital problem of resource allocation for rescue activities after the earthquake. The study has been
intended to provide a means for developing ecient decision support systems.

In more specic, the study has given three earthquake rescue scenarios corresponding to three dier-
ent models. We can see that, each model is one answer for each dierent questions. While the rst
model tells us about the necessary time of nishing the rescue work by ambulances and gives us hints
about the number of ambulances should be added to do the rescue work after the earthquake, the sec-
ond model is an improvement from the rst model by adding more the destroyed road into the model
with the rescuer forces is the volunteers, and the last model is developed by combining the rst two models.

During the period of doing this research, I have realized that Agent-Based Model and GIS data seem
to be the core techniques that many research projects would use for modeling and simulating emergency
situations and human activities in disaster responses. It is true that, when used together, they provide
a degree of realism in scenarios that would be dicult to nd with other techniques. However, since
emergency management is a large application domain where most of them claim to broadly support hu-
man decision-making, they only focus on one or some limited objectives, which are moreover dierent
between projects. Therefore, in all three models that represented in this study, we can see that we can
not compare any models with other models to conclude which one is better. We only know that which
model is a better answer for which question.

29
30
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[14] Nguyen Hong Phuong. Earthquaketsunami hazard assessment and risk mitigation in vietnam using
gis. 2011.

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Appendix A

Detail about GAMA

GAMA (GIS Agent  base Modeling Architecture) is a simulation platform, which aims at providing eld
experts, modelers, and computer scientists with a comprehensive modeling and simulation development
environment for building spatially explicit multi-agent simulations. It has been rst developed by the
Vietnamese-French research team MSI (located at IFI, Hanoi, and part of the IRD/UPMC International
Research Unit UMMISCO) from 2007 to 2010, and is now developed by a consortium of academic and
industrial partners led by UMMISCO, among which the University of Rouen, France, the University of
Toulouse 1, France, the University of Orsay, France, the University of Can Tho, Vietnam, the National
University of Hanoi, EDF RD, France, and CEA LISC, France. [Drogoul 2015]

Figure A.1: Brief history of GAMA

Its latest version, 1.7, can be freely downloaded or built from source, and comes pre-loaded with several
models, tutorials and a complete on-line documentation.

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Beyond these features, GAMA also oers:

A complete modeling language, GAML, for modeling agents and environments

A large and extensible library of primitives (agent's movement, communication, mathematical func-
tions, graphical features..)

A cross-platform reproducibility of experiments and simulations

A powerful declarative drawing and plotting subsystem

A exible user interface based on the Eclipse platform

A complete set of batch tools, allowing for a systematic or "intelligent" exploration of models
parameters spaces

G A M A allows to:

Design, prototype and write models in the GAML agent-oriented language and its optional graphical
modeling tool.

Instantiate agents from any kind of dataset, including GIS data, and execute large-scale simulations
(up to millions of agents).

Couple discrete or continuous topological layers, multiple levels of agency and multiple paradigms
(mathematical equations, control architectures, nite state machines).

Dene rich experiments on models and explore their parameters spacefor calibration and validation.

Design rich user interfaces that support deep inspections on agents, user-controlled actions and
panels, multi-layer 2D/3D displays and multiple agent aspects.

Strengths of GAMA:

Supports the development of quite complex models

Seamless integration of geographic data and GIS tools with agent-based models

Integrates a methodological approach to dene multi-level models

Integrates high-level tools: multi-criteria decision making tools, clustering functions, statistical
operators. . .

Easily extensible thanks to its open architecture, which relies on two legacy Java technologies: OSGI
plugin framework and Java annotations

GAML language:
Models that users want to simulate in GAMA have to be written in a special language, called GAML
(short for GAMA Modeling Language)

GAML is born from the necessity to have a high-level declarative way of dening and reusing struc-
tures found in almost all agent-based models.

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 Although this choice requires users to learn a new programming (or better, modeling) language, ev-
erything has been made in GAMA to support a short learning curve, so that they can become almost
autonomous in a limited time (informal measures taken at the dierent events centered on GAMA have
shown that one day is enough to acquire sucient skills in writing complete models in GAML).

GAMA model structure:

Figure A.2: Architecture of GAMA platform

In GAMA, the model is constructed by GAML language (le * .gaml). The structure of GAMA
project includes directories like: doc, images, includes and models.

The structure of a model (les * .gaml) has built in GAMA includes 4 parts:

Global: The denition of variables, actions, dynamics and global initializations.

Environment: Dening the properties of the global environment - useful when integrated into the
GIS data model.

Entities: Dening the species of agents

Experiment (Output): execution context of simulations, dening for instance their inputs and out-
puts. Several experiments can be dened in a same model.

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36
Appendix B

The table of comparison between this

internship study and the PhD research by
Chu Thanh Quang

37
Table B.1: The comparison between this internship study and the PhD research by Chu Thanh Quang
PhD Research by CHU
The internship study
Thanh Quang
+ Improve the (simulated) eectiveness of rescue activities
+ Make the simulation model more realistic
Common points
+ The result that will help stakeholders to acquire a better understanding
of rescue issues and become more experienced in emergency response.
+ Using GAMA platform
Combine with Machine Learning Did not combine with Machine
techniques Learning techniques
Many evaluation criterions: time to
Dierent points complete rescue, the number of dead
Focus on only one evaluation criterion:
victims, the number of exchanged
the needed time to rescue
messages, the number of conicting
actions
Three kinds of rescue forces: Two kinds of rescue forces:
polices, ambulances, reme volunteers, ambulances
Changing the number of victims: Keeping the number of victims:
10, 20, 50, 100, 150 88 victims
Changing the number of rescue forces:
Keeping the number of rescue forces + Ambulances: from 5, 6, 7 to 8
+Volunteers: from 10, 11, 12. . . to 17
The research area : Thanh Xuan
The research area : Ba Dinh district
and Dong Da district

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Appendix C

Detail contact of IGP-VAST

Address: Building A8, 18 Hoang Quoc Viet street, Cau Giay District, Hanoi, Vietnam

Tel: (84-4) 39 94 03 17

Fax: (84-4) 37 91 45 93

Email: dongdatsongthan@igp-vast.vn

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