Disaster world

Artificial intelligence (AI) research provides a rich source of modeling languages capable of generating socially plausible simulations of human behavior, while also providing a transparent ground truth that can support validation of social-science methods applied to that simulation. In this work, we leverage two established AI representations: decision-theoretic planning and recursive modeling. Decision-theoretic planning (specifically Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes) provides agents with quantitative models of their corresponding real-world entities’ subjective (and possibly incorrect) perspectives of ground truth in the form of probabilistic beliefs and utility functions. Recursive modeling gives an agent a theory of mind, which is necessary when a person’s (again, possibly incorrect) subjective perspectives are of another person, rather than of just his/her environment. We used PsychSim, a multiagent social-simulation framework combining these two AI frameworks, to build a general parameterized model of human behavior during disaster response, grounding the model in social-psychological theories to ensure social plausibility. We then instantiated that model into alternate ground truths for simulating population response to a series of natural disasters, namely, hurricanes. The simulations generate data in response to socially plausible instruments (e.g., surveys) that serve as input to the Ground Truth program’s designated research teams for them to conduct simulated social science. The simulation also provides a graphical ground truth and a set of outcomes to be used as the gold standard in evaluating the research teams’ inferences.