Elderly people evacuation planning in response to extreme flood events using optimisation-based decision-making systems: A case study in western Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and severity of floods in various regions globally, raising concerns about the efficacy of evacuation planning strategies that were created under different climate scenarios, particularly for vulnerable individuals. Urban areas are at high risk of flooding, making the evacuation of elderly people to safer locations a potential necessity in many future flooding situations. However, despite the significance of transportation planning in the evacuation of the elderly, there has been little research considering the impact of disasters on the areas undergoing evacuation. This paper aims to address this research gap by presenting an integrated evacuation approach for elderly people under flooding conditions. The proposed model combines a flood simulator with multi-objective metaheuristic algorithms to minimise the expected evacuation time for all evacuees and reduce the number of rescue vehicles used. To improve the performance of the optimisation algorithms, dominant properties are established, which are used to create a local search. The proposed approach is tested and validated using a case study in Sydney, Australia, and the findings suggest that the proposed method can generate effective evacuation plans for the elderly in a reasonable amount of time under realistic emergency scenarios brought on by extreme flood events. The study adds to the body of knowledge on disaster risk reduction strategies both theoretically and practically, and has crucial policy implications for emergency managers, planners, and decision-makers in countries where urban areas are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change.