Behaviorally Informed Modeling and Simulation for Urban Disaster Response, Sheltering, and Resilience
A special issue of Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Environment and Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 April 2027 | Viewed by 135
Special Issue Editors
Interests: pedestrian safety; crowd dynamics; decision-making; virtual reality; modelling
Interests: pedestrian evacuation; disaster risk assessment; emergency resource planning; crowd modelling; child safety
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Modeling and simulation have become increasingly important tools for understanding urban disaster response and strengthening the resilience of urban systems. In disaster scenarios, human behavior such as decision-making, information acquisition, and response actions plays a central role in shaping risk exposure, response efficiency, and recovery trajectories. Models that do not adequately account for these behavioral mechanisms may struggle to fully represent the dynamic processes of disaster response and resilience evolution in real urban contexts. This Special Issue aims to bring together behaviorally informed and application-oriented research on urban disaster response and resilience, with particular interest in pedestrian evacuation, crowd dynamics, emergency sheltering, decision-making under uncertainty, virtual reality experiments, digital twins, and data-driven simulation.
The Special Issue encourages contributions across multiple spatial scales, from individual and group behavior in buildings, transport hubs, underground spaces, and public venues to large-scale evacuation, shelter planning, emergency resource allocation, and resilience assessment at the district, city, or regional level. We welcome empirical, methodological, and applied studies that connect behavioral evidence, spatial analysis, and simulation tools to support evacuation planning, emergency management, and resilience-oriented urban design. Relevant topics include evacuation modeling, route-choice behavior, vulnerable populations, group behavior, emergency guidance, risk communication, shelter location and accessibility, human–environment interaction, and model validation using experiments, field data, or immersive virtual reality.
This Special Issue will complement the existing literature by promoting a more integrated and human-centered understanding of disaster response across scales. It seeks to highlight research that advances both theoretical knowledge and practical methods for safer, more adaptive, and more resilient urban systems.
Dr. Yunhe Tong
Dr. Yaping Ma
Dr. Dongyue Zhao
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- urban disaster response
- urban resilience
- large-scale evacuation
- emergency shelter planning
- evacuation modeling
- crowd dynamics
- decision-making
- emergency resource allocation
- vulnerable populations
- simulation
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