Spatial risks and complex systems : methodological perspectives

The reflections regarding risk and industrial catastrophes question the complexity theories. Besides the new concepts which lead us to question older concepts (risk, hazard and vulnerability), we propose to think about more practical aspects, for example the modelling of human behaviour and the confrontation in crisis situations. The link between concepts as: critical self-organization, emergence, bifurcation, and the methods in the Distributed Artificial Intelligence used to model them is however difficult. In this paper, we present ongoing analysis on the key concepts of risk science, such as the hazards and the catastrophes. We propose to enrich them with complex systems theories. First, we present methodological perspectives of the DAI, for example multi-agent systems, and compare them with other simulation methods used in the context of the risks. Secondly, we present the MOSAIIC model (Modelling and Simulation of Industrial Accidents by Individual-Based methods) which gives possibilities to simulate the behaviour of individuals during an industrial accident. The project and the MOSAIIC model aim to explore the effects of a major industrial accident on public health. For instance, the emission and the spread of a toxic gas in an urban environment may be a serious danger for the human health. Thus we propose to study the consequences of this type of event in order to reduce the vulnerability of the populations. In the model, we emphasize both on spatial and behavioral dimensions (ie. ha ls hs -0 01 93 88 1, v er si on 1 4 D ec 2 00 7 Author manuscript, published in "European Conference Complex Systems-EPNACS’07, Emergent Properties in Natural and Artificial Complex Systems, Dresden : Germany (2007)"