HPII: High-Performance Inter- Organizational Interaction for Disaster Response

1. HPII: High-Performance Inter- Organizational Interactionfor Disaster Response An evolutionary game Fred Phillips October 19, 2012

2. Organization of the talk • Background on disasters and statement of today’s problem • Relevant prior work • Proposal for a game to be used as • Experiment • Data-gathering instrument • Training tool for disaster aid agencies • (Possibly) theoretical advance.

3. Disastersand theInter-agency Problem

4. Distribution of Natural-Hazard Deaths in the US KA Borden & SL Cutter, Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States.Int’l Jour of Health Geographics 2008, 7:64, http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/7/1/64

5. Public Disasters: Examples • Exxon Valdez spill • Deutsch Bank building • Mortgage crisis • Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy • Fukushima • BP blowout

6. “Public Disasters” • Caused by nature, by individuals, or by public or private institutions - or a combination • High-impact events • Low-probability events individually - though collectively, public disasters are quite probable • Multiple organizations, often from different sectors, are • To blame for the event, and/or • Involved or accountable for remediation

7. The Disaster Cycle Today we look at this segment of the cycle.

8. Most of these failures of disaster response/remediation involved failures of inter-institutional relationships • Jurisdictional disputes • Quest for glory & budget • Unrestrained externalization of corporate costs; • Lack of accountability e.g., in the selling and securitization of mortgages; • Difficulty of introducing change when multiple stakeholders guard the gate; and • Lobbying and industry control of supposed watchdog institutions

9. We all know the plot…

10. After a disaster each aid organization wants to… • Display its expertise • Be “in charge” • Avoid legal liability • Avoid embarrassment • Get good press • And try to shift responsibility to, or even sabotage the efforts of, other agencies, in order to get these things.

11. The Players in Three Crises

12. How can we optimize inter-agency cooperation in post-disaster situations, balancing these conflicting forces?Some Prior Work

13. Classifying the tools Within the organization Inter-organizational Normal times Crisis times * R. Zolin, US Naval Postgraduate School (undated)

14. Mapped these ideas to the disaster situation, in a multiple-perspectives systems schema: Moral hazard - Externalities Adverse selection - Responsibility Integrity/Breach of Trust - Accountability Moral authority - Transparency Phillips, Fred, “Inter-institutional Relationships and Emergency Management.”International Journal of Society Systems Science, Vol. 3, No.1/2 2011 pp. 40 - 57.0 Phillips (2011)

15. The incidence of altruistic (cooperative) behavior depends on The actor’s assessment of the chances of ever meeting the other party again. The actor’s assessment of the probable frequency of meeting the other party again. Delton, Andrew W., Krasnow, Max M., Cosmides, Leda, and Tooby, John, “Evolution of direct reciprocity under uncertainty can explain human generosity in one-shot encounters.”Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, July 2011. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/07/20/1102131108.abstract 1 Delton et al, in Proceedings of the NAS 2011, showed:

16. Bit-string ‘organisms’ are coded for cooperative or selfish strategies. A ‘strategy’ is a vector of probabilities. Game is played. Strings producing high payoffs may ‘reproduce’ ‘mating’ with other successful strings (offspring have sub-strings from each parent) Occasional random ‘mutation’ Many ‘generations’ of plays show Emergence of cooperative behavior Five basic cooperative super-strategies Nowak, Martin, “Why We Help.”Scientific American, July 2012, 34-39. Nowak, Martin, “Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation.”Science 314:1560-1563, December 8, 2006. Nowak, Martin, Super-cooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. Free Press, 2012. Novak (Science 2006) uses game theory to study evolution of cooperative behavior in prisoners-dilemma type games.

17. Direct reciprocity “evolution of forgiveness” Spatial selection Accords with Delton et al. Indirect reciprocity Decision to help is based on recipient’s reputation for helpfulness. Kin selection Tribal selection Differs from spatial or kin selection b/c altruism is not directed at an individual. Novak: Five basic cooperative super-strategies

18. “Humans, more than any other creature, offer assistance based on indirect reciprocity, or reputation.” Why? Because we have language (and Facebook, and credit-scoring agencies!) to make a person’s reputation widely known. Novak:

19. In spite of the 9/11 Commission Report and a revised incident command system, effective interagency collaboration at emergency incidents within New York City has not been fully achieved. This thesis explores how ... collaborative efforts [depend on] inter-organizational trust, and whether emergency management agencies [can] assume a leadership role in fostering and implementing trust-building programs [for] collaborative agency partnerships. [I interviewed] senior management of seven public safety agencies... Conclusions: Trust enhanc[es] effective interagency partnerships [and] increased problem solving capacities. The “leadership in building trust” concept is complex, ..., [requiring] a synthesis of agency skills to meet homeland security challenges. Currao, A New Role for Emergency Management: Fostering Trust to Enhance Collaboration in Complex Adaptive Emergency Response Systems.Master's thesis, Naval Postgraduate School Monterey CA, 2009.

20. Research gap/opportunity The mathematics of kin and group selection are still controversial. Post-disaster cooperation is a special case. Research questions: How can the evolutionary game idea be adapted to post-disaster cooperation among agencies? Is Delton’s “probability assessment” (extended spatial selection) idea most relevant to disaster situation, or Novak’s indirect reciprocity? The Game

21. Level of emergency preparedness Capacity to cooperate Low | Mid | High | Very High A disaster aid agency’s planning (hypothetical)

22. Game: How much cooperation to extend? Agency #2 Payoffs are “Level of effective disaster relief.”These are payoffs to the victims, not to the players!

23. “In this disaster scenario, you must deal with an agency that you will interface with in x% of your own agency’s future missions. Here is that agency’s history of (non)cooperation.” x will be drawn from a suitable probability distribution, on each play. The distribution will be conditional on the size of the other player. Players will be told:

24. Extend a Low Mid High, or Very high level of cooperation to the other agency.... Assuming their budget allocation supports that level of cooperation. Players will decide to:

25. A small agency will interface with a large agency in a large % of the smaller agency’s missions. A larger agency, with A bigger budget and A larger number of total missions Will interface with the particular smaller agency in only a small % of its missions. It is highly likely that

26. Agencies’ strategies for extending cooperation to other agencies. Agencies’ views of their own mission. News item: Scottish fire departments now emphasize fire prevention skills over dousing skills. This is “double-loop learning.” What evolves, in this evolutionary game?

27. As experiment, to find out what could happen under evolutionary scenario. As an online game, played by disaster agency managers, so the researchers can gather data on empirical behavior of agencies. As thesis topic, for a student with programming skills? Later, as a training tool for agencies. Uses of the game

28. (Practical impact)Kristalina Georgieva, the EU’s humanitarian aid commissioner On ECHO’s principles: “Humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” On disaster preparedness: “By 2016, we are proposing that all member states have risk management plans in place.” DEVEX.COM

29. (Possible Research Impact) • Particularizing “evolution of cooperation” research to the disaster situation. • Delton’s “probability assessment,” or Novak’s indirect reciprocity? • New wrinkles in game theory? • Disaster victims as passive 3rd player • Double-loop learning

30. In addition to those cited in the slides: Chen, Bin. (2008). “Managing Inter-organizational Partnerships: Preconditions, Processes and Perceived Outcomes,”Best Papers Proceedings of the Sixty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. “Crisis and Consequence.”BizEd, (January/February 2009), 24-30. Faraj, Samer, and Yan Xiao, “Coordination in Fast-Response Organizations.”Management Science 52-8, August 2006, 1155-1169. Kale, Prashant, and Harbir Singh, “Managing Strategic Alliances: What do we know now, and where do we go from here?”Academy of Management Perspectives, August (2009) 45-62. Kemeny, John G. (1980). "Saving American Democracy: The Lessons of Three Mile. Island." Technology Review 82 (June-July). Muhtada, Dani. “Ethics, Economics and Environmental Complexity: The Mud Flow Disaster in East Java.”Systems Research and Behavioral Science, vol. 25 (July, 2008), 2. White, Leroy. “Connecting Organizations: Developing the Idea of Network Learning in Inter-Organizational Settings.”Systems Research and Behavioral Science, vol. 25 (September, 2008), 6.e Tatham, Peter; Kov當s, Gygyi. The application of ‘swift trust’ to humanitarian logistics. International Journal of Production Economics 126(1) July, 2010. p. 35-45. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2009.10.006. Other readings