Virtual “Disaster Cities” to Provide Real-Life Resilience
Nalini Venkatasubramanian, a professor of computer science (third from left above), has partnered with Tohoku University in Japan to better analyze the impact of natural disasters on humans to outline real-time pathways to safety. The three-year partnership between UC Irvine and Japanese researchers is funded by a $1 million grant by the National Science Foundation and Japan’ Science and Technology agency. The project involves designing tools to create Disaster Digital Twin cities that are representative of Sendai in Japan and Southern California. “Although the Digital Twins project is looking at a very specific context, we’re also considering what solutions translate across the international community and plan to expand our findings more globally,” says Venkatasubramanian. “We need to understand the structure of the community and its policies to simulate a variety of different scenarios to help people better prepare.”