Improving Emergency Management by Modeling Ant Colonies

The focus of this thesis is to identify whether emergency management can be modeled after ant colonies, perfectly emergent organizations, in order to better manage an autonomous response. An ant colony uses a dense and resilient communications system that incorporates a positive feedback loop, which allows the organization to be adaptable. Currently, emergency management organizations are experimenting with social media to establish a communications system similar to the positive feedback loop used by ant colonies. This thesis advocates that following a disaster, an emergency management organization gather information from the public through an Internet survey. The survey would be quickly processed and provide critically needed information.