Thanks to ALL Who Took Part in Our International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters in Greece

It has been an incredibly busy, yet energizing, several few weeks with two international conferences on different continents and different seasons (summer and winter).

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all those who took part in the 6th International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters, which took place in Piraeus, Greece, July 3-6, 2023.

The below collage was constructed to capture a few of the highlights.

The venue of the conference was the Historical Library of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation in Piraeus.

We had the pleasure of hearing from outstanding plenary speakers, both practitioners and academics.

It was inspiring to see conferees representing many different countries including: Austria, Germany, Nepal, Japan, Canada, Greece,  Italy, Turkey, the UK, and the US.

In a period in history with compounding disasters, the exchange of knowledge and best practices and working together to address the great challenges that we are faced with are needed more than ever.

Information about the conference, including the presenters and their talk titles can be found on the conference website.

I had the pleasure of presenting work done with my PhD student at the Isenberg School of Management Dana Hassani and colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics: Professor Oleg Nivievskyi and Dr. Pavlo Martyshev. The link to the slidedeck of the presentation can be accessed here.

Not everyone could join us because of visa and other extenuating circumstances. Sadly, in April, Professor Urmila Pyakurel of Nepal passed away. She was an avid participant in our previous Dynamics of Disasters conference. We paid a tribute to her in Piraeus. A PhD student of hers presented on their joint work. Urmila lost her life to cancer, which she had battled for many years. She was also a Humboldtian. You can read about some aspects of her amazing life here.

And, while I was at the IFORS conference in Santiago, Chile, July 10-14, 2023, at which I gave a keynote, we heard from Springer Nature that we are getting a contract to edit the volume: "Dynamics of Disasters: From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity." My fellow Co-Editors on this project are: Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, Stefan Pickl, and Chrys Vogiatzis. It was a pleasure to work with them on the organization of this very timely conference.

The Dynamics of Disasters Conference in Greece and Multidisciplinary Perspectives

After the fabulous EURO Conference in Dublin, Ireland, which I wrote about in my previous blogpost, I journeyed to Kalamata, Greece with a stopover in London and then Vienna.

Along with my outstanding colleagues, Professors Panos M. Pardalos of the University of Florida and Ilias S. Kotsireas of Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, I had organized another Dynamics of Disasters conference in Kalamata, Greece, July 1-5, 2019.  I'd like to also take this opportunity to congratulate Professor Pardalos on his receipt of the Humboldt Research Award. He was recently recognized in a ceremony with other Humboldt recipients in Berlin by Angela Merkel and the President of Germany!

The importance of multidisciplinary perspectives in all phases of disaster management from preparedness and mitigation to response was vividly illustrated at this conference by speakers from many different countries.

Kalamata is located on the Mediterranean sea and it is not an easy location to get to, but the beauty of the venue, as well as the fascinating scientific exchanges and discussions on a theme of great importance, made the travel worthwhile for everyone. The conference took place at the Elite Resort hotel in Kalamata. Below are some photos taken at the conference site and the immediately surrounding area. The local organizer was Sofia Papadaki, to whom thanks are extended!

The two previous such conferences that I also co-organized with Pardalos and Kotsireas resulted in two edited volumes published by Springer. Many of the chapters are enjoying multiple downloads and I have used several in the course: Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare that I teach at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst.

The delegates at this Dynamics of Disasters conference came from the USA, Canada, Greece, Italy, Poland, Germany, Korea, Japan, Russia, and Nepal, resulting in a very international experience and also an intense one since there is only a single track of talks. Below is a group photo taken at the conference venue of the delegates.

Professor Stephan Pickl of Germany, who is Chair of Operations Research at the Universität der Bundeswehr München, delivered an excellent lecture on a Smart Optimization Framework SARA, emphasizing the hyperconnectivity of critical infrastructure networks and stochastic elements. He is a renowned disaster management expert and involved in policy making as well in Germany.

Dr. Matsuno of Japan presented an excellent talk on the use of gaming on smart phones to inform and educate about disasters in Tokyo, including floods. There was also an excellent presentation on a course on emergency management developed by Dr. Assael, a chemical engineer from Greece, with input from students, and presentations on elegant network models for evacuation by Dr. Urmila Pyakurel of Nepal and colleagues and by her student Hari Nandan Nath. The use of DEA in regions for Russia for coping with disasters was presented by Sergiy Demin on work done with Dr. Fouad Aleskerov, and a description of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University in Massachusetts was described by Dr. Steven Flynn. A talk on disaster management at mass gatherings with a focus on the Athens Marathon was delivered by Dr. Angeliki Bistariki.

Professor Theodore Trafalis of the University of Oklahoma delivered an outstanding tutorial on machine learning for imbalanced data with applications to severe weather predication, including tornadoes.

It was a pleasure to listen to the very innovative and important research being conducted by colleagues in Italy, including that of Dr. Ugo Fiore and Salvatore Scognamiglio and colleagues, on the prevention of geological disasters, with even the use of a large-scale dataset on China.

The audience was very engaged and new friendships made and networks established.

It was fabulous to meet Dr. Steven Flynn, the founding director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University in Massachusetts.

Another wonderful, unexpected delight was to hear Dr. Angeliki Bistariki speak. She is a nurse and a PhD and, in her presentation on mass gatherings and the Athens Marathon, she had a video from our local news station in western Massachusetts - WWLP, moderated by Barry Krieger on how MEMA prepares for the Boston Marathon!

I mentioned in our discussions that I had hosted a MEMA official in my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class last semester, Ms. Sara Zalieckas, who was responsible for safety at the 2019 Boston Marathon. My blogpost on her brilliant guest lecture can be viewed here.

It was also terrific to hear the talk by Dr. Georgios Tsaples and colleagues on system dynamics modeling of the consequences of extreme weather conditions on traffic in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece. There were even insights as to modal choice and use (or not) of public transportation following.

Stamatis Papangelou reported on his research on land property data logging on a blockchain ledger, which is very innovative and enables the assessment of land property for the risk of natural disasters.

Below are photos taken with Professor Pardalos and his son, Akis (whom we have had the pleasure of seeing at numerous conferences around the globe), and with Professor Ilias Kotsireas and the "other" Professor Nagurney - my husband, along with conference assistants.

The structure of the conference included time for coffee breaks, nice meals, some touring, and a banquet with a view of the Mediterranean Sea.

This was our third time in Kalamata, Greece, and we were quite impressed by how much the surrounding area seems to have improved economically with new shops, restaurants, and many happy families strolling in the evening when the ocean breezes from the Mediterranean cooled off the area. Nice to even see bicycle lanes downtown.

I would be remiss not to mention the quality of the food in Kalamata - the fruits and vegetables are some of the most delicious ones I have ever eaten!

I have made my talk on game theory and disaster relief, co-authored with my doctoral student Mojtaba Salarpour and Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania, available for download to further discussions.

And, today, we took another group photo of those who were still able to be with us.

Special thanks to Professors Pardalos and Kotsireas as well as to Sofia Papadaki, and to all the delegates to our Dynamics of Disasters conference, for making it such a success. Best of luck with your continuing research!

Hurricane Harvey, Texas, and All of Us

This has been quite the extraordinary week with the solar eclipse (amazing) on August 21 followed only a few days later by Hurricane Harvey (horrific), which is causing "epic, catastrophic" flooding in Houston, Texas,  the 4th most populated city in the US. 

The path of the hurricane can be viewed here. 

To emphasize the significance of this natural disaster, which has been called a one in a 500 year flood, major news sites such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, have all removed their paywalls, which is also being already referred to as the worst natural disaster to ever hit Texas.

You may ask, why worry about what is happening in Texas? First of all, this natural disaster hits "close to home." As an academic,  I know many faculty at universities in Texas and to see some closing down, making tough decisions as to what to do with students, and when to reopen,  reminds me of Hurricane Sandy back in October 2012 when my daughter was a college freshman and her college (as did many in the affected areas of the Northeast) closed, and she could not even make it back to Amherst because there was no public transportation due to fuel shortages. A niece of mine had just started her freshman year at Tulane University in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck but she had had sufficient warning that she was able to get a flight back to Kansas and that university was closed for an entire semester. And my daughter had spent the summer before her senior year of college as an intern researcher at the marvelous Lunar and Planetary Institute, which is located in Houston. I remember her flying from Sweden where she was visiting me when I had an appointment as a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg and flying then to Houston, which had had some rain, and I was worried at that point about flooding. Now, because of Hurricane Harvey, there are very few passable roads in the surrounding Houston area, flights are halted at both Houston airports (how would crews and workers even make it there?), hospitals are without power and running water, and folks are being told to shelter in place and to bring axes to their attics so that they can break through attics to the rooftops to be rescued. 911 operators are overwhelmed with calls.

There are many questions being raised as, for example, why was Houston not evacuated? 
And the relatively new FEMA Director is saying that recovery from the deadly Harvey disaster "could take years."


The last time I was in Texas was last May, when the NSF-funded Workshop on Disrupting Illicit Supply Networks, took place at the University of Texas Austin. It was a fascinating workshop with a focus on human trafficking with very dedicated researchers and practitioners in attendance. Since Hurricane Harvey struck, I have sent messages to operations research colleagues at Texas A&M University, UTAustin, and Rice University, which is in Houston, and, although I have not heard back (yet) from them, I do hope that they are in a safe place.

If you recall Hurricane Katrina, which was the costliest natural disaster, and occurred in August 2005 (Superstorm Sandy was the second costliest one in the US),  the Annual INFORMS Conference (which is the conference of my major professional society) was supposed to take place that Fall in New Orleans - the conference did take place but was moved to San Francisco that November. This year, our INFORMS Conference is supposed to take place in Houston in October! Time will tell but, in the meantime, we have all those dealing and struggling with Hurricane Harvey in our hearts and prayers.

Houston, not only because of its size is so crucial to the US, but it is also an oil and gas hub. Hence, there could be major economic ramifications, and perhaps even environmental ones due to the destruction by Hurricane Harvey. And, it was the primary residence of the Isenberg family (Gene Isenberg was the former CEO of Nabors Industries) and our School of Management at UMass Amherst bears his name.

I do a lot of work in the disaster research area and also teach a course on humanitarian logistics and in recent papers we have focused on, among other topics, issues of coordination post disasters of relief agencies using game theory. A paper of ours on the topic is: A Generalized Nash Equilibrium Network Model for Post-Disaster Humanitarian Relief, Anna Nagurney, Emilio Alvarez Flores, and Ceren Soylu, Transportation Research E 95: (2016), pp 1-18. For a general audience I wrote an article on the topic for The Conversation: How disaster relief efforts could be improved with game theory. Also recently, we published an article on the importance of communications in emergencies: FirstNet for emergency communications: 6 questions answered. 

And my most recent co-edited book, with Ilias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos, which includes very timely papers, even on evacuation networks, is: Dynamics of Disasters; Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights.

Thinking of all those in Texas suffering through this natural disaster and the rains are to continue for several more days!

The Resilience of New Englanders

Although my heritage is European and I was born in Canada, I consider myself very lucky to be living in such a historic part of the US, that is, in New England.

Indeed, when not living in such great places as Sweden and Austria and even Cambridge, Massachusetts or traveling far and wide, Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, with such great towns as Amherst, Deerfield, and others, has become our home.

Since our daughter has gone to elementary school at The Bement School, in Old Deerfield, and is now at Deerfield Academy, located just down the street from Bement, both in a truly historic and beautiful part of Massachusetts, we have come to know many families from New England (and even across the globe since Deerfield Academy is primarily a boarding school).

What has struck me most after Hurricane / Tropical Storm Irene hit New England last Sunday is how the neighbors and communities pulled together (with some great help from the National Guard I might add and local emergency responders plus electric power folks from far and wide).

After the torrential rains had subsided, a neighbor's son showed up at our door with a chainsaw and chipper ready to clean up our front yard on which two big trees had fallen. We appreciated his offer but declined since he is a minor. A local crew showed up on Monday morning to do the job and we were just thrilled. A DPW worker arrived yesterday in his free time to chop up the logs and piled them into his pickup truck to use as firewood (a win-win situation since he gets fuel for the winter and this cost us nothing and we enjoyed talking to him).

I have written about and posted photos of Deerfield after Irene and what has been called a once in 500 years flood. The cleanup operations continue and Historic Deerfield will reopen tomorrow (but the lovely Deerfield Inn will remain closed for an unknown amount of time).

One day after the flooding, my daughter was back at her summer job as a tour guide at Deerfield Academy and this week, despite the flooded fields and neighboring farmlands, gave tours to prospective students and their families not only from California but from as far away as Korea and Turkey. She did not show the flooded areas, which today, 5 days after the hurricane, remain covered in thick, gooey mud.

Her elementary school, The Bement School, had had to have families evacuated and a gorgeous new dorm has had to have its flooring entirely replaced and other damage recovery done. The head of the School, Ms. Shelley Borror Jackson, wrote a wonderful, poignant message of how the flood surrounded her home and the waters filled the basement and moved up the stairs. Her message can be read here. A neighboring school, The Eaglebrook School (you may not know but the present King of Jordan went to both Eaglebrook and Deerfield Academy) provided refuge for both the Jacksons and some other evacuated families.

Our neighbors just north of Deerfield, from Greenfield to Brattleboro, Vermont, and further up sustained much damage and it will take years for Vermont to recover and to repair its devastated roads and bridges whose destruction isolated communities before help, ranging from hikers to state troopers to military in Chinook helicopters arrived to deliver necessary water, food, and medicines to stranded folks.

And the good news arrived, in the form of an email message today, from the President of Historic Deerfield that said:

Just in time for Labor Day Weekend, Historic Deerfield museum will again welcome visitors to its world-class collections and historic houses on Sat., Sept. 3 at 9:30 a.m. The reopening marks a return to some semblance of normalcy and a chance to refocus on the fall season at hand after seven days of forced closure to the public due to infrastructure damage caused by flooding from Hurricane Irene.

"Now that we can guarantee the safety of our visitors and our collections we will gladly reopen," said Philip Zea, President of Historic Deerfield. "We're very grateful for the heroic efforts of staff, volunteers, and vendors who have helped us prepare for and recover from this crisis."

Visitors will find almost all museum offerings intact. The two exceptions will be the continued closure of the Sheldon House and the Channing Blake Meadow Walk.

A Once in 500 Years Flood -- Hurricane Irene and Photos of Deerfield

It seems that Manhattan managed quite well during and after Hurricane or "Tropical Storm" Irene. My 92 year old uncle, who lives in mid-Manhattan, and who has survived two World Wars and saw the towers crumble on 9/11, called me today to check on us in western MA. He said that the subways are running in NYC and he has been back to work (what an amazing generation his is) and was disappointed that Lincoln Center canceled its performances this past weekend because of Hurricane Irene.

Western Massachusetts and Vermont continue to feel the impact of Irene with many towns in the latter completely isolated due to flooded roads and downtowns. Power is still out in parts and bridges have been closed and await inspection, if they are not destroyed.

Amherst made it through relatively unscathed. We lost two trees in our front yard and so did some neighbors but the flooding in neighboring towns has been horrendous.

Yesterday, after taking detours to get to work at Deerfield Academy, where my daughter is working as a tour guide this summer, the scenes of flooding were horrific.

Above I have posted some photos of areas of Deerfield Academy in Old Deerfield one day after Irene hit this past Sunday.

Amazingly, there was even a group of National Guardsmen with a Humvee guarding a road off of Old Deerfield, which leads to farmland. Disaster recovery experts were at work plus even families at the Bement School had to be evacuated as well as several ones at Deerfield Academy (even by boat).

A UMass Amherst geoscientist, Professor David F. Boutt, who is an expert on this part of very historic Massachusetts, said that what happened is a once in hundreds of years event.

Tough to see so much of the beautiful landscape under water as well as the farms with corn and potatoes and pumpkins.

We wish all those affected by Irene a timely recovery.

In addition, even the Deerfield Inn suffered flooding and will be closed for several weeks (and this is a busy time with the schools in the area opening up and with the leaf-peepers soon to arrive).

More photos of Deerfield under water can be accessed here.

This morning we received the press release below from Historic Deerfield.

Flooding from Hurricane Irene Causes Museum, Inn Closings

Historic Deerfield Plans to Reopen on Thursday, Sept. 1;

Deerfield Inn and Champney's Restaurant & Tavern Closed
Indefinitely

Due to extreme flooding from Hurrricane Irene, Historic Deerfield is closed to the public through Wednesday, August 31, 2011. The museum plans to reopen on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2011 at 9:30 a.m.-although three historic houses at the flooded north end will likely remain closed. The Deerfield Inn and Champney's Restaurant & Tavern will be closed indefinitely.

"This kind of severe flooding is rare in Deerfield," said Philip Zea, President of Historic Deerfield. "Luckily our advance preparations on Friday and Saturday helped ensure that the museum houses and collections remained safe."

Not so fortunate was the Deerfield Inn, which sustained major flood damage to the first floor of its annex and to the basement of the main building. It may be several days before the waters recede enough to allow investigators to gain access to these spaces to assess the damage and begin the process of rebuilding. In the meantime, guests have been relocated and reservations are being cancelled for the next two
weeks.

"Our goal is to reopen the Inn as quickly as possible," said Susan Martinelli, Vice President for Busiess Affairs at Historic Deerfield. "We will not know the full extent of the project until the investigation is completed."

"Aside from the Deerfield Inn, we had water fill the cellars of three buildings," added Zea. "But rivers keep old habits and the Deerfield River has flooded for ten thousand years when the Connecticut refuses to take her water. That's why these fields are so fertile."

Historic Deerfield (www.historic-deerfield.org) plans to reopen on Thursday, Sept. 1, for tours from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information about Historic Deerfield please call 413-775-7214. For more information on the Deerfield Inn and Champney's Restaurant & Tavern, please call 413-774-5587.

Click here for some helpful hints, from scientists, on how to deal with flooded homes!

The Supply Chain Network Design for Critical Needs with Outsourcing Paper is Now Published Online

Our paper, "Supply Chain Network Design for Critical Needs with Outsourcing," has now been made available online by the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, in the journal Papers in Regional Science.

With the number of disasters growing over the past decade as well as the number of people affected by disasters, the design of supply chain networks for critical needs products, such as water, food, and medicines, is of paramount importance. Such problems are uniquely challenging since the needs of the affected population should be met as closely as possible with the undersupply of food, water, and medicines, leading to loss of life. At the same time, the oversupply of products may also carry costs, due to unnecessary waste and even, possibly, environmental damage.

In fact, the United Nations is reporting in today's New York Times that the horrific floods in Pakistan are resulting in severe shortages of such critical needs supplies as food and water.

In our paper, we developed a mathematical model that allows for the optimal design of such supply chain networks at minimal total cost and with the satisfaction of the product demands at the demand points, as closely as possible.

Research on which this paper was based, which was conducted also by Professor Patrick Qiang and my doctoral student, Min Yu, was inspired by the Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa Conference that I organized at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como. The Rockefeller Foundation and this workshop are acknowledged in the paper. We also thank Professor Manfred Fischer of the Vienna University of Business and Economics for his support. Professor Fischer was my host in Vienna in March 2009 when I delivered the lecture, "Synergies and Vulnerabilities of Supply Chain Networks in a Global Economy."