"One of the major lessons learned is that hospital/medical 'surge' capacity will be severely strained during a pandemic influenza event ... hospital staff will also be affected by illness. It is imperative that the local healthcare community be engaged in emergency preparedness planning long before an actual event occurs."

Mary Tyszkiewicz
Senior Analyst, Homeland Security Institute

"We went from dial-up to broadband in this setting."

Dr. Tim Lant
Director, Decision Theater

"Testing the university's pandemic response plan by leveraging the Decision Theater's capabilities provided an important mechanism for improving the safety and preparedness of the university should a pandemic occur."

Michael Crow
President, Arizona State University

"The pandemic exercise highlighted the value of being able to visualize a rapidly changing context when making local decisions in the face of a fast-moving global threat. The simulated crisis at Decision Theater made the exercise, and the consequences of our decisions, more compelling and real."

Allen Warren
ASU's Assistant Police Chief

"Any emergency situation involves some 'chaos' –if you define chaos as an unpredictable event. When a team goes through an exercise like this, you build a lot of rapport and trust, so when you're faced with a real event, it isn't as chaotic."

Allan Markus - MD MS MBA FACP
Director, Campus Health Services

"Using ASU Decision Theater, we have been able to not only test our plan, but to develop an epidemiological, mathematical model that other groups could use to test their plans ... in our exercise, the ASU Pandemic Plan theoretically saved over 70 student lives."

Megan Jehn, PhD, MHS
School of Health Management & Policy
WP Carey School of Business

"Computer simulations are novel strategies to help decision-makers plan for and respond to a pandemic. They allow decision makers to analyze a situation, consider existing resources, explore the effectiveness of various interventions and adapt the plan accordingly."