Abstract
In recent years, extreme natural hazards threaten cities more than ever due to contemporary society’s high vulnerability in cities. Hence, local governments need to implement risk mitigation and disaster operation management to enhance disaster resilience in cities. Transforming existing open spaces within cities into emergency shelters is an effective method of providing essential life support and an agent of recovery in the wake of disasters. Emergency shelters planning must identify suitable locations for shelters and reasonably allocate evacuees to those shelters. In this paper, we first consider both the buildings’ post-disaster condition and the human choice factor that affect evacuees’ decision, and propose a forecasting method to estimate the time-varying shelter demand. Then we formulate an integrated location-allocation model that is used sequentially: an emergency shelter location model to satisfy the time-varying shelter demand in a given urban area with a goal of minimizing the total setup cost of locating the shelters and an allocation model that allocates the evacuees to shelters with a goal of minimizing their total evacuation distance. We also develop an efficient algorithm to solve the model. Finally, we propose an emergency shelters planning based on a case study of Shanghai, China.
Highlights
Cities with a high population and building density have a greater safety risk during earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters
We propose a generalized formula which is based on the assumptions above and Wang et al [11]’s study to estimate the time-varying shelter demand in one month after an earthquake occurs
Only one long-term emergency shelter has been built in Shanghai, and it can provide refuge for only about 6000 people, which is far short of the predicted demand
Summary
Cities with a high population and building density have a greater safety risk during earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters. An indispensable part of the preparedness phase is determining the location of emergency shelters, which serve two primary functions: provide temporary residences where survivors can avoid secondary damage such as fires and diseases, and allow first responders to efficiently perform rescue operations. Under such circumstances, their health and safety cannot be guaranteed because of the high risk of secondary damage. After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, more than 2000 shelters were established rapidly, providing some 166,000 evacuees with a safe place to stay during post-disaster recovery. There are significant differences in social and economic levels between Haiti and Japan, emergency shelters planning needs to be integrated into urban resilience planning to reduce vulnerability
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