TRACES: undersTanding human BehaviouR in case of terrorism attaCks in mass gathErings buildingS
Research Project Objectives
The fight against terrorism is a top priority for the EU, since over the last years the number of threats has grown, which have a strong impact on people security and safety. In 2016, eight Member States reported attacks, where 142 victims died and 379 injured. Different factors are required for mitigating risks, preparing for, reacting to, overcoming, and learning from these disasters, like policies, strategical analysis and intervention of LEAs (Law Enforcement Agencies). Also, the resilience of societies heavily depends on how their citizens behave individually or collectively. During a terrorist attack, people are conditioned to make critical decisions and subsequent protective actions like escape, protect in place, warn others, etc., which may well enhance their defence or decrease dramatically their survival probability.
The ambition of TRACES will therefore seek to understand and assess how different sequences of self-protective behaviours (decisions and actions) might affect people security and explore the potential of transferring this knowledge to emerging technologies to reduce the amount of human losses. Despite their importance, from an engineering point of view, the literature review moves from the reasons that drive
terrorists to probabilistic risk analysis, and nevertheless there is a lack of comprehensive approaches to human behaviour.
TRACES project will face this central issue by reaching the following novel aims:
1. To conduct controlled experiments where we can study the influence of different factors (CSP factors) on decisions and actions in terrorist attacks
2. To assess and identify suitable and effective behaviours through new computational models which reflect the dependence of the survival probability in specific terrorist events, decisions and actions adopted by people
3. To explore pathways for novel cyber-physical technologies based on those real-time models, for supporting the selection of appropriate sequence of decisions and actions.
Requesites
We seek a candidate with a strong motivation for scientific research. He/She has to have an engineering background and a Master’s degree with a good student record and be enrolled or admitted to a doctoral program for the 2020/2021 academic year, or able to be admitted. The candidate has also to be fluent in English, both written and spoken.
Salary and start date
The candidate is offered a 4 years full-time position. The salary will be linked to Spanish official grants for PhD students (FPI) that will be opened from October 13 to October 27. More info is available in the following link:
The position is expected to start on January 2021.
Host Research Centre: GIDAI Group at University of Cantabria
The University of Cantabria (UC) is the only on-site public institution to offer official university study courses in the self-governed region of Cantabria. It is a young, dynamic public university, founded in 1972, whose main objective is to contribute to social progress via its commitment to teaching and scientific excellence.
The GIDAI group at the UC has been undertaking intensive research, technology transfer and training activities in the field of human behaviour in emergency conditions and fire science for the last 25 years. This research group is a national and international referent in safety science thanks to research, innovation and dissemination activities carried out to improve safety in society.
Over the last 10 years UC-GIDAI has developed a R&D line with more than 30 research projects and contracts with a fundraising of more than 7 M€ and over 120 scientific papers (in scientific journals and peer-reviewed international conferences) devoted to Fire Safety and Evacuation Management. The research group is renowned for its contribution to evacuation studies through experimental research on human behaviour and the development of specialized computer models.
The successful candidate will work at GIDAI premises located in the School of Industrial Engineering and Telecomunnications at the University of Cantabria Campus set in the low-lying area of Las Llamas in Santander.
Contact
Those interested please, send a letter of application and a CV to:
Gemma Ortiz (ortizg@unican.es)
