Natural disasters are major adverse events that cause large-scale economic, human, and environmental losses. They are usually difficult to predict and it is even more challenging to prevent them from happening. These characteristics demand disaster management strategies to be in place for the mitigation of damaging consequences when a disaster happen.
Robocup Rescue Simulation is an education and research project initiated in reaction to a concrete natural disaster, the Great Hanshin earthquake, which hit Hyōgo Prefecture – Japan on January 17, 1995 killing more than six thousand people, most of them in the city of Kobe. The mission of the RoboCup Rescue Simulation League is to promote research and development in the socially significant domain of natural disaster. The effective implementation of this mission is translated into three main aims
- To provide a simulator able to realistically represent natural disaster scenarios where response plans can be assessed.
- To define evaluation benchmarks for response plans elaborated by policy-makers to act in real natural disaster situations.
- To promote research and development by organizing competitions to stimulate the exchange of ideas and experience between researchers and practitioners. These aims are designed to help in the development of more sophisticated and formalized plans to effectively respond to natural disasters and reduce the negative impacts on society.