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Proceedings of EPNACS 2011 within ECCS’11 Emergent Properties in Natural and Artificial Complex Systems Vienna, Austria - September 15, 2011

EMERGENT HUMAN BEHAVIOUR DURING A DISASTER: THEMATIC VERSUS COMPLEX SYSTEMS APPROACHES
Damienne Provitolo∗ Edwige Dubos-Paillard†and Jean-Pierre M¨ller‡ , u
the idea of individual and group behaviour, which are an atypical, immediate and contextualizedresponse to the event: ’El desastre o la emergencia masiva se puede of societies in terms of specific human behaviour in times of disas- definir come un peligro que se fue mas alla y que incide ter or catastrophe, which may be either a form of vulnerability or en la conducta individual y de grupos, ya que los diversos on the contrary of social resilience, and at the forms of emergence sectores de lapoblacion deben dejar de lado sus meta indiassociated with such exceptional events. The first part proposes a viduales et sociales que configuran su marco de referencia, typology of behaviours observed at times of catastrophe and identi- y formular de manera inmediatamente nuevas metas que fies properties common to all such behaviours. Parts two and three deben ser resueltas aqui y ahora ’1 . askwhether behaviours observed at times of disaster or catastrophe In this paper, we look both at the responses of societies (behaviours that stand apart from everyday behaviours and that in terms of specific human behaviour in times of disaster can be observed both individually and collectively) can be charac- or catastrophe, which may be either a form of vulnerabilterized as emergent behaviours.Answering this involves weighing ity or on the contrary of social resilience, and at the forms up inputs from the science of risk and the science of complexity. We of emergence associated with such exceptional events. present the different properties for characterizing emergent human This research postulates that a large majority of socibehaviour, in order to recombine the disciplinary approach of scien-eties, no matter their level of economic development, are tific communities. This knowledge of the conditions underlying the unprepared to face man-made or natural disasters and emergence of behaviours points the way to how the phenomenon domino effects. Paradoxically, the Japan, which is among might be modelled. the most advanced countries in terms of risk culture, has Keywords. Human behaviour,emergent group, global behaviour, just suffered a chain of events that led to one of the most catastrophe, disaster, complex system, emergence, qualitative severe catastrophe that has ever occurred. Despite this change. exceptional event, recent years have been characterized by the multiplication of major catastrophic phenomena. This tendency is not likely to reverse in the futur be1 Introductioncause of population growth and the densification of infrastructures and population in high risk areas. If the trend Disasters or catastrophes engender social and spatial dis- continues, thousands of human lives will be lost and the organization of the territories affected by these events. costs of disasters should exceed USD 300 billion a year Such disorganization is usually temporary and seldom ir-(Groupe URD-Urgence, r´habilitation, d´veloppement-, e e reversible. Fritz (1961) lists four main properties char- 2010). Moreover, as stated by Lagadec ’shocks are beacterizing catastrophes or disasters: (a) events that are coming very rapidly sytemic, they are evolving quickly identified in space and time (date, frequency and dura- from the local level to the national and the international tion)(b) that have impacts, (c) on social units, (d) which ones’ as it has been demonstrated by the eruption of the in return come up with responses or adjustments to those Eyjafjallaj¨kull volcano in 2010 (Iceland) which caused o impacts. Fritz thus makes connections between the event, air traffic disruption in our globalized world, or by the the impacts and the responses to those impacts. The so-...