Helbing even thinks the model could help autonomous robots of the future efficiently navigate to their destinations, perhaps to deliver supplies within a busy hospital.

A day after the levees broke, the generators in the hospital failed, knocking out ventilators, transfusion machines and fresh water supplies. Nineteen patients died.

Instead of armaments, hospital supplies and the materials to build a school were unloaded from a ship to the platform, and thence to landing craft which disgorged them onto a beach.