Analysis of Flood Evacuation Process in Vulnerable Community with Mutual Aid Mechanism: An Agent-Based Simulation Framework

Zhiqiang Wang,Jing Huang,Huimin Wang,Weiwei Cao,Jinle Kang

doi:10.3390/ijerph17020560

Abstract

Timely and secure evacuation of residents during flood disasters or other emergency events is an important issue in urban community flood risk management, especially in vulnerable communities. An agent-based modeling framework was proposed in order to indicate how the community properties (e.g., community density and percentage of vulnerable residents), residents’ psychological attributes (e.g., flood risk tolerance threshold) and mutual aid mechanism affect the flood evacuation process. Results indicated that: (1) The community density negatively affected the flood evacuation efficiency. The greater the density of the community, the longer the evacuation time. (2) There was a negative correlation between the flood risk tolerance threshold of residents and evacuation efficiency. (3) The proportion of vulnerable resident agents had opposite effects on the evacuation efficiency of different types of communities, which was to negatively affect low-density communities and positively affect high-density communities. (4) Mutual aid mechanism can reduce evacuation time in low-density communities, and the effect was more pronounced with a higher proportion of vulnerable resident agents in the community. These findings can help managers to develop better emergency evacuation management for urban communities.

Highlights

(4) Mutual aid mechanism can reduce evacuation time in low-density communities, and the effect was more pronounced with a higher proportion of vulnerable resident agents in the community
Flood disasters are a major threat to human society and economic systems, and they can wipe out the wealth accumulated in the past [1]
The aims of this study were to find out how the community properties, resident’s psychological attributes [26,27] and mutual aid mechanism affect the emergency evacuation efficiency, summary the characteristics of emergency evacuation in vulnerable communities, and give corresponding improvement suggestions of better response to emergency evacuation

Summary

Introduction

Flood disasters are a major threat to human society and economic systems, and they can wipe out the wealth accumulated in the past [1]. The frequency and scope of flood disasters have increased significantly as well as the economic losses and human casualties caused by floods (https://www.cred.be). Casualties and economic losses can be reduced or prevented if people arrive shelters and transfer the assets before the flood disasters. Timely and securely evacuation of residents is of great importance during flood disaster events [2]. Emergency evacuation of urban communities is becoming more important and serious. Vulnerability is generally considered as the possibility that an individual or a group is exposed to and affected by natural disasters [3,4,5]

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion