Evolutionary Methodologies for Decision Support (2003-2004)

One of the primary objectives of the MCEER research program is to contribute toward the development of disaster resilient communities. As a result, there is a general need to model, understand and ultimately direct the behavior of a wide variety of complex multi-scale systems. Within the context of a critical care facility, these not only include the structural and non structural systems that shape the physical environment, but also the organizational systems that define the social and economic climate. Evolutionary methodologies (Holland, 1992) may be ideally suited to study and provide guidance for many of these tasks. Robust computational approaches are developed for decision support that incorporates both engineering and sociotechnical aspects. Furthermore, we attempt to create a theoretical and computational framework that may have applicability for complex decision-making in general.