Missouri S&T Civil Engineering Professor Preaches Midwest Tornado Preparation
Growing up in northeast
But as her academic career took Yan to several postdoctoral fellowships and then faculty positions in
"Our mission is to make
As director of the
She's built two small-scale tornado simulators that use toy models to mimic the destruction of high-speed twisters and hopes to build a large-scale simulator that she envisions will make S&T a global leader in her field. According to Yan, S&T would join
Public safety - and preparedness -- is central to Yan's work. That mission is what prompted her to present a TedXMissouriS&T talk on the vitality of tornado preparation earlier this year.
While her research typically relies on complex mathematical models to measure the correlations between varying tornadic wind patterns and infrastructure resiliency, Yan relied on a pair of analytical observations more commonly invoked in fields such as cognitive psychology, economics or political science -- prospect theory and game theory -- during her public presentation in the spring semester.
In prospect theory, researchers have found that people are more willing to endure certain-but-smaller financial losses than take the lesser risk of losing a larger amount all at once, Yan explains. So in that scenario, paying an annual
But those behavioral patterns are also influenced by other human factors, such as complacency. To that end, Yan is working to develop a virtual reality animation experience that would allow users to realistically determine how their homes would fare in a tornado.
"Based on prospect theory, to convince individuals to structurally reinforce their homes, the key is to inform them of the significant losses induced by tornadoes," she says. "You can see the wind flow, and you can see how your house is impacted."
Yan is also tapping game theory -- the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation among those with competing and overlapping interests -- to promote tornado resistance on a broader scale.
"Since tornado resistance is a matter for the entire community, based on game theory, in order to maximize each other's benefit, the entire community has to play the game cooperatively," she explains. "Tornado resilience is a community responsibility, not an individual one."
There's perhaps no place in the
"The possibility of a tornado occurrence is very, very low, that's true," Yan notes. "So you are always thinking a tornado will never come. But once it comes, you have nowhere to hide."
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