TSUNAMI EVACUATION IN A MASSIVE CROWD EVENT USING AN AGENT-BASED MODEL

Abstract

Under emergencies, individuals tend to move faster than during normal conditions, i.e., evacuation vs non-evacuation scenarios (Helbing et al., 2000; Cornes et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2018). Evacuations because of false alarms, terrorist attacks, fires, or disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis can quickly increase stress levels in people. Activities such as carnivals, festivals, sports, pilgrimages, and marches gather thousands of people in one place. In the literature, open space tsunami evacuations in places such as beaches are scarce. Studies from Takabatake et al. (2018) and Lanza et al. (2021) have integrated beach users in their simulations. However, studies involving massive tsunami evacuations including socio-psychological interactions, to our knowledge, are not documented. The main objective of this study is to assess human behavior in a hypothetical scenario such as a massive tsunami evacuation in a coastal area, using Valparaíso City as a case study.