HPII: High-Performance Inter-

Organizational Interaction
for Disaster Response
An evolutionary game

Fred Phillips
October 19, 2012
Organization of the talk
Background on disasters and statement
of todays 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.
Disasters
and the
Inter-agency Problem
Distribution of Natural-Hazard Deaths in the US
KA Borden & SL Cutter, Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States. Intl
Jour of Health Geographics 2008, 7:64, http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/7/1/64
Public Disasters: Examples
Exxon Valdez spill
Deutsch Bank building
Mortgage crisis
Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy
Fukushima
BP blowout
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
The Disaster Cycle
Today we
look at
this segment
of the
cycle.
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
We all know the plot

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.
The Players in Three Crises
Exxon Valdez

Exxon Valdez captain,
crew
Exxon Corp.
State of Alaska
US Dept of Interior
US Environmental
Protection Agency
Alyeska Corporation
Deutsch Bank NY

Deutsche Bank
Executives
Insurors
New Yorkers
Governments
EPA
New York courts
Planners
Construction
companies
Legislators
Community Groups
Mortgage crisis

Home buyers
Mortgage originators
Mortgage buyers
Mortgage insurors
Financial
intermediaries
Investors
US Federal Reserve
Bank

How can we optimize inter-
agency cooperation in post-
disaster situations, balancing
these conflicting forces?

Some Prior Work
High-Performance
Organization (HPO)
theory
Alliance management
Accounting rules
Negotiation
Game theory
Some HPO theory
Crisis management Game theory?
Swift Trust in Hastily
Formed Networks*
???
Classifying the tools
Normal
times
Crisis
times
Within the organization Inter-organizational
* R. Zolin, US Naval Postgraduate School (undated)
Phillips (2011)
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
Delton et al, in Proceedings of
the NAS 2011, showed:
The incidence of altruistic (cooperative)
behavior depends on
The actors assessment of the chances of
ever meeting the other party again.
The actors 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
Novak (Science 2006) uses game theory to
study evolution of cooperative behavior in
prisoners-dilemma type games.
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: Five basic cooperative
super-strategies
1. Direct reciprocity
evolution of forgiveness
2. Spatial selection
Accords with Delton et al.
3. Indirect reciprocity
Decision to help is based on recipients reputation for
helpfulness.
4. Kin selection
5. Tribal selection
Differs from spatial or kin selection b/c altruism is not
directed at an individual.
Novak:
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 persons reputation widely
known.
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.
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.
The Game
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 Deltons probability assessment
(extended spatial selection) idea most
relevant to disaster situation, or Novaks
indirect reciprocity?
A disaster aid agencys planning
(hypothetical)
<- Operational Skills | Cooperation Skills ->
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
% of budget spent on alliance training
L
e
v
e
l

o
f

e
m
e
r
g
e
n
c
y

p
r
e
p
a
r
e
d
n
e
s
s

Capacity to cooperate
Low | Mid | High | Very High
Game: How much cooperation
to extend?
Agency #1
lo mid hi very hi
lo - - o -
mid - - + o
hi o + + o
very hi - o o -
Payoffs are Level of effective disaster relief.
These are payoffs to the victims, not to the
players!
Players will be told:
In this disaster scenario, you must deal
with an agency that you will interface
with in x% of your own agencys future
missions. Here is that agencys 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 decide to:
Extend a
Low
Mid
High, or
Very high level of cooperation to the other
agency....
Assuming their budget allocation
supports that level of cooperation.
It is highly likely that
A small agency will interface with a
large agency in a large % of the smaller
agencys 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.
What evolves, in this
evolutionary game?
1. Agencies strategies for extending
cooperation to other agencies.
2. Agencies views of their own mission.
News item: Scottish fire departments now
emphasize fire prevention skills over
dousing skills.
This is double-loop learning.
Uses of the game
1. As experiment, to find out what could
happen under evolutionary scenario.
2. As an online game, played by disaster
agency managers, so the researchers
can gather data on empirical behavior
of agencies.
3. As thesis topic, for a student with
programming skills?
4. Later, as a training tool for agencies.
(Practical impact)
Kristalina Georgieva, the EUs
humanitarian aid
commissioner
On ECHOs
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
(Possible Research Impact)
Particularizing evolution of cooperation
research to the disaster situation.
Deltons probability assessment, or
Novaks indirect reciprocity?
New wrinkles in game theory?
Disaster victims as passive 3rd player
Double-loop learning
Other readings
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; Kovs, 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.