Dynamics of Disasters: From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity

Based on the “Sixth International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters” (Piraeus, Greece, July 2023), this volume includes contributions from experts who share their latest discoveries on disasters either caused by natural phenomena or human activities. Authors provide overviews of the tactical points involved in disaster relief, outlines of hurdles from mitigation and preparedness to response and recovery and uses for mathematical models to describe disasters and their impacts. This volume includes additional invited manuscripts from other experts and leaders in the field. Topics covered include economics, optimization, machine learning, government, management, business, humanities, engineering, medicine, mathematics, computer science, behavioral studies, emergency services, and environmental studies and will engage readers from a wide variety of fields and backgrounds.

Ilias S. Kotsireas serves as a full professor of Computer Science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In 2002 he founded the CARGO Lab, and serves as its director for more than 15 years. He has over 150 refereed journal and conference publications, chapters in books, edited books and special issues of journals, in the research areas of Computational Algebra, Metaheuristics, High-Performance Computing, Dynamical Systems and Combinatorial Design Theory. He serves on the Editorial Board of 7 international journals. He serves as the Managing Editor of a Springer journal and as the Editor-in-Chief of a Springer journal and a Birkhauser book series. He has organized a very large number of international conferences in Europe, North America and Asia, often serving as a Program Committee Chair or General Chair. His research is and has been funded by NSERC, the European Union and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He served as Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Symbolic Computation (SIGSAM) on a 4-year term: July 2013 to July 2017. He is a co-chair of the Applications of Computer Algebra Working Group (ACA WG), a group of 45 internationally renowned researchers that oversee the organization of the ACA conference series. He has delivered more than 10 invited/plenary talks at conferences around the world.

Anna Nagurney is the Eugene M. Isenberg Chair in Integrative Studies in the Department of Operations and Information Management at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is also the Founding Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks. Anna received her AB, ScB, ScM, and PhD degrees from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She is the author/co-author of over 230 refereed journal articles and 16 books and has been recognized for her research with honors and awards, including being elected an RSAI Fellow in 2007, an INFORMS Fellow in 2013, and a Network Science Society Fellow in 2019. She is the recipient of the 2005 Moving Spirit Award of INFORMS,  the 2007 WORMS Award, a 2016 INFORMS Volunteer Service Award for Distinguished Service, and was the Omega Rho Distinguished Lecturer in 2018 and the IFORS Distinguished Lecturer in 2022 . She received the Constantin Caratheodory Prize in 2019 and the Harold Larnder Prize in 2022. Anna has held a variety of visiting positions, including being a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University in the UK, a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg and at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. She has also been a Fulbrighter twice – in Austria and Italy and her research has received support from the National Science Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. She is a Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine.

Panos M. Pardalos serves as distinguished professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Florida. Additionally, he is the Paul and Heidi Brown Preeminent Professor of industrial and systems engineering. Pardalos is also an affiliated faculty member of the computer and information science department, the Hellenic Studies Center, and the biomedical engineering program. Additionally, he serves as the director of the Center for Applied Optimization. Pardalos is a world leading expert in global and combinatorial optimization. His recent research interests include network design problems, optimization in telecommunications, e-commerce, data mining, biomedical applications, and massive computing. Pardalos is a prolific author who lectures all over the world. He is the recipient of a multitude of fellowships and awards, the most recent of which is the Humboldt Research Award (2018).

Stefan Pickl is a professor for "Operations Research" at the Department of computer science at Universität der Bundeswehr München, which position he has held since 2005. He studied mathematics, electrical engineering and philosophy at TU Darmstadt and EPFL Lausanne 1987-93; Dipl.-Ing. ’93. Doctorate 1998 with award. Assistant Professor at Cologne University; Dr. habil. 2005; venia legendi "Mathematics". Stefan Pickl published more than 80 articles and several books in the context of "Modelling, Simulation and Data-Driven Optimization of Dynamical Systems and Networks". Since 2010 Prof. Pickl is chair of the Advisory Board of the German OR Society. In 2001, he organized the first Cologne Twente Workshop on Graphs and Combinatorial Optimization CTW.

Chrysafis Vogiatzis is a teaching associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree in Industrial & Systems Engineering from the University of Florida, as well as a Dipl. Eng. degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. His academic interests lie in network analysis and optimization, along with their vast applications in modern socio-technical, transportation and infrastructure, and biological systems. At the University of Illinois, Chrysafis is teaching Probabilities and Statistics for Engineers for the undergraduate program, and Analysis of Network Data for the graduate program. His scholar activities have been funded (as a PI and a co-PI) by the Army Research Lab and the National Science Foundation. He is a member of INFORMS, IISE, and ASEE and is currently serving as the Vice Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee of INFORMS.