I work with people who dabble in  fascinating technologies: geo-coding, hydrology analysis, mathematical modeling, and a rich field that may be hard to grasp: system dynamics. To strip it down to its basics, it’s all about using complex feedback systems to understand business, environmental and social systems.

Ozgur Araz who sits a few feet away from me, just returned from presenting a paper on ‘a hierarchical system dynamics approach‘ to pandemic planning. To the rest of us, that a new approach to large-scale crisis planning. Think earthquakes, hurricanes, contamination etc.

Considering the play that pandemic influenza planning is getting at  federal level, including the White House, and in many countries, the model Ozgur presented could be very useful to any organization with a plan in their back pocket.

My takeaway from the report is that:

• Crisis plans need to be proactive not reactive.
• While people pay a lot of attention to the medical and pharmaceutical side of the plan (looking at how anti-virals will be sourced and stockpiled etc.) they need to pay attention to how to manage the social dimensions of a crisis –things like how to quarantine people, when to suspend ‘normal’ operations, and how to handle evacuation etc.

More about the paper Ozgur presented, here.

You could find an abstract here.