Researchers developing disaster-planning tool that will work like a video game
HALIFAX — A pair of researchers in Halifax are working on an elaborate, computerized disaster-planning simulator that will one day function like a multiplayer video game — the first version of which has already plotted what could happen if the port city is inundated by a catastrophic flood.
Professor Ahsan Habib at Dalhousie University says a test of an early model has suggested it would take 15 hours to evacuate the densely populated Halifax peninsula if the ocean suddenly rose between 3.9 and 7.9 metres.
“We have only five exit points … (making) our transportation network very vulnerable in a mass evacuation,” Habib said in an interview Monday from the Dalhousie Transportation Collaboratory, a lab that brings together civil engineers and urban planners.
“This is just a bare-bones model, and now we’ll start playing with it.”