Brilliant Lecture on Resilience by a Great Dane - Dr. Rasmus Dahlberg

Yesterday, we had the honor and pleasure of hosting Professor Rasmus Dahlberg of Denmark in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. His talk on "Resilience - the Danish Version" was brilliant. It is not often that one has the opportunity to hear from someone who is not only a disaster research scholar and a practitioner, with many fascinating experiences in a spectrum of emergency management exercises and events, including ones in the Arctic, but is also a novelist and media personality!

I had had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Dahlberg previously and met him when he presented a paper in the first Dynamics of Disasters conference that I co-organized in Kalamata, Greece. The paper that he delivered at this conference appears in the refereed conference proceedings.

Coincidentally, Dr. Dahberg delivered his talk yesterday in Isenberg's new Business Innovation Hub, which was designed by the award-winning Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Last April, Ingels came and spoke at the unveiling of the hub and accompanying celebrations.

I gave some opening remarks and then Mojtaba Salarpour, the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, welcomed the speaker and the audience. It was great to have faculty and students from the Isenberg School, the UMass Amherst College of Engineering, and the College of Computer and Information Sciences in attendance, as well as faculty from other universities, and even several journalism students who were excited about covering the event!



Dr. Dahlberg is a faculty member at the Royal Danish Defence College and considers himself a "disaster historian." He has worked for the Danish Emergency Management Agency in the Department of Crisis Management.

He emphasized that there are no natural hazards in Denmark and that "all disasters are man-made." What is especially challenging now is that there are more risks from climate change and advanced technology. And many disasters have been the result of human error, due to complexities of advanced technology.  He also emphasized that Denmark is one of the most peaceful countries but is being faced with sea level rise, along with expansions of maritime routes, which can lead to more maritime accidents and disasters.

He noted that emergency management in Denmark has evolved from "civil protection" and that Denmark in the Anthropocene is seeing more and more extreme weather events with extreme rainfall.

He brought up numerous interesting points, including the need for  "zero responders," who are volunteers rising up to assist. He mentioned an incident of extreme rainfall and flooding in Denmark in 2013, for which multiple shelters were identified but very few citizens actually used them. The Danes, through social media, had informed the community that they had opened up their own residences to those needing shelter and, in effect, solved the disaster response effectively. People, for the first time, in Denmark, used one another and social media in this way. The peer to peer coordination and communication was very successful!

Dr. Dahlberg, on February 7, 2014, contributed to a Danish Emergency Management Association Workshop which he called "Resilience 101," in which he spoke about resilience as being the ability "to bounce forward" after a disturbance that disrupts normal operations. He noted the work of Dr. Tierney, who was also on his PhD dissertation committee, who defines "resilience as the obverse of risk" and the work of Dr. Alexander Augustine, who notes that "We need to build resilience to the uncertainties that lie ahead."

A more resilient Denmark is needed to tackle climate change. He also emphasized that "we cannot build our way out of everything" and mentioned the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities program.

Dahlberg believes that one must stress the system for resiliency.

He also emphasized that it is expensive to invest in emergency management and singled out the "Arctic Response Force." He singled out the possibility of a cruise ship disaster in Arctic waters. He has even written up disaster scenarios, which were then used in Denmark for disaster preparedness and response exercises!

After his presentation, there was a terrific Q&A; we took a group photo of those who were still in attendance, followed by a delicious lunch at the University Club at UMass Amherst, at which the stimulating conversations continued.

And, at lunch, he told us how to escape from a car sinking in the water and provided us with advice to always wear hiking boots while flying (helps in climbing out should you need to evacuate while taking off or landing).

We thank Dr. Rasmus Dahlberg for his brilliant lecture on resilience and wish him much continuing professional and personal success! His work and energy inspired all of us.

We ended the perfect intellectual and social day with dinner at Judie's in Amherst, complete with their iconic item - popovers!

Outstanding Inaugural INFORMS Security Conference in Beautiful Monterey, California

I arrived back in Amherst at 1AM this morning, having flown from Monterey, California to Denver, Colorado and then to my "local" airport - Bradley.

I had been in beautiful Monterey to take part in INFORMS' inaugural Conference on Security and it was outstanding.  The official dates of the conference were February 9-11, 2020.  Luckily, I am on sabbatical this semester, so this was manageable for me and I was very much looking forward to presenting at this conference. It was also quite nostalgic, since the first talk I ever gave at a conference was at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey (which was also heavily involved in this conference) at an MIT/ONR conference organized by Professor Michael Athans of MIT. I was then working in the defense sector, focusing on the navy, in Newport, Rhode Island, while pursuing my Master's at Brown University. I was the only female presenter at that conference.

First, I would like to congratulate the organizers of the INFORMS Security Conference: Mr. Harrison Schramm, Captain Brian Morgan, and Dr. Paul Nicholson, on its success! The format was excellent - 50 minute presentations (8 or so parallel sessions), with lunch and coffee provided, and ample time for discussion. Everyone was very gracious and friendly.  One "marker of the success" of this conference was the number of INFORMS Fellows in attendance, including: Gerry Brown, Stephen Robinson, Vicki Bier, Michael Fu, Sheldon Jacobson, and me :) If I missed someone, do let me know! Attendance was about 100 (I was told) and consisted of faculty, military, practitioners from various companies, government, and even some students that I met.

The plenary talks were great as well as a risk analysis panel conducted by Gerry Brown and Sam Savage. 


It was thrilling to even see Stefan Pickl, who traveled all the way from Germany for the conference. He had been a participant in the latest Dynamics of Disasters conference that I co-organized with Panos M. Pardalos and Ilias S. Kotsireas, and which took place last summer in Kalamata, Greece. We are now co-editing a new volume, to be published by Springer.

In the above photo I am standing with Stefan Pickl, Rob Dell, who gave one of the plenary talks, and Conference Chair Harrison Schramm.

I had the pleasure of presenting Monday morning on Game Theory Network Models for Disaster Relief. Special thanks to Nathaniel Bastian for being an outstanding stream chair of our stream: Interdisciplinary Applications - Frontiers. He had all of our presentations ready for projecting on his laptop.

Below are some photos from the delivered talks and of one of the great lunches! Many thanks for the wonderful presenters. Special to also hear from Jun Zhang and James Minas.








The venue was extraordinary - the hotel is located in downtown Monterey with hiking/biking trails in proximity and views of the Pacific.

And, at its best, a conference generates new research ideas, new collaborations, reconnecting with colleagues, and growing your network. The INFORMS Conference on Security delivered on all counts and at a location that would be hard to improve upon.  I was even presented with a book by Booz Allen Hamilton consultants. Interestingly, I had had an offer from this company when I was finishing up my PhD.


Below I have posted a few photos of the beauty of the natural environment of Monterey.




I am looking forward to the next INFORMS Conference on Security but, in the mean time, there is a lot of important research to be done by our community!