Modeling and Analysis of the Impact of Risk Culture on Human Behavior during a Catastrophic Event

Abstract

In a world more and more affected by natural and/or industrial disasters, it is essential to understand, analyze and control human behavior during such events. The work presented in this article is one of the results of a transdisciplinary collaboration between geographers, psychologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, operational staff and stakeholders in risk management. This collaboration made it possible to identify the diverse behavioral reactions that can occur during a disaster and to propose a categorization of these behavioral states and their transitions. These behavioral dynamics are described by the APC (Alert–Panic–Control) mathematical model, which integrates two key elements (among others) during disasters: cognition and social contagion. Several scenarios are developed, and a qualitative analysis of the model is conducted to better understand the role of crowd density and risk culture on behavioral dynamics.