Monday, September 15, 2014

Dynamics of Disasters - A Conference Not to be Missed

The number of disasters is growing as well as the number of people affected by them from the Ebola epidemic in western Africa to the floods in Kashmir to humanitarian crises in war-torn Syria, Iraq, and eastern Ukraine. 

The challenges faced by citizens, humanitarian organizations, governments, and even businesses in dealing with disasters are immense and the research questions have never been more timely.

Together, with Professors Panos M. Pardalos and Ilias Kotsireas, we are organizing a conference that will take place in Greece this summer that should not be missed.

The conference is on the theme Dynamics of Disasters and the topics that we are seeking papers and presentations on are below:
  • Disaster communications and social networks
  • Healthcare issues and disaster relief
  • Disaster team coordination, integration, and synergies
  • Humanitarian logistics and relief supply chains
  • Advances in methodological tools for emergency preparedness, response, and risk mitigation
  • Performance metrics for disaster response
  • Critical infrastructure protection and resiliency
  • Financial funding for disaster relief
  • Learning from disasters and response
  • Cooperative game theory
  • Dynamical systems
  • Decision-making under risk and uncertainty
  • Spread of diseases and contagion
  • Modelling and mathematics of disasters.
The Program Committee is nearly complete and we are thrilled to have such a knowledgable and international group:
  1. Irene Abi-Zeid (Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada)
  2. Bradley Adame (Arizona State University, USA)
  3. Fuad Aleskerov (Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia)
  4. Ashwin Arulselvan (Technische Universitaet Berlin, Germany)
  5. Burcu Balcik (Ozyegin University, Industrial Engineering Department, Istanbul, Turkey)
  6. Dirk Brockmann (Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany)
  7. Sergiy Butenko (Texas A&M, USA)
  8. Patrizia Daniele (University of Catania, Italy)
  9. Stanislaw Grzeda (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, USA)
  10. Jose Holguin-Veras (RPI, USA)
  11. Jacquleen Joseph (Jamsetji Tata Centre for Disaster Management, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India)
  12. Joo-Young Jung (International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan)
  13. Athanasia Karakitsiou (Industrial Logistics, ETS Institute, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden)
  14. Rob Kevlihan (Kimmage Development Studies Centre, Dublin, Ireland)
  15. Evangelos Kranakis (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada)
  16. Bishawjit Mallick (Karlsruhe, Germany)
  17. Claude Miller (The University of Oklahoma, USA)
  18. Athanasios Migdalas (Industrial Logistics, ETS Institute, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden)
  19. Oleg Prokopyev (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA)
  20. Olivier Rubin (Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, Denmark)
  21. Karen Smilowitz (Northwestern University, USA)
  22. Fuminori Toyasaki (Logistics and Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, Toronto, Canada)
  23. Chrysafis Vogiatzis (University of Florida, USA)
  24. Tina Wakolbinger (Institute for Transport and Logistics Management, Vienna, Austria)
  25. Francesco Zirilli (Universita di Roma La Sapienza, Italy).
Information on the conference, including the venue and the deadline for paper submissions is at:
 http://www.caopt.com/DOD2015/index.html

I hope that you can join us - we need the best minds to tackle the problems that we are facing.