Tsunami Evacuation Model

Lammel et al (2010) conducted a tsunami evacuation study in the urban coastal areas for the city of Padang, in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Their research aimed to estimate the evacuation time, identify bottlenecks, and detect highly endangered areas of the study area. They used GIS to extract information from remotely sensed data, such as street data and building shape in order to classify them, based to their vulnerability. The researchers then combined the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with their data to form a hazard analysis for the study area. From the hazard analysis, they produced tsunami inundation zone maps and found that the flow velocity of water from a tsunami is higher between buildings. They performed a vulnerability analysis

They used the Tohoku University’s Numerical Analysis Model for Investigation of Near-field Tsunamis (TUNAMI) to simulate the tsunami inundation. Netlogo was used to create an agent-based model to simulate the evacuation process in which human behavior and individual characteristics of evacuees were considered in addition to using road and shelter data derived from GIS. Tsunami departure curves were used to set up the departure time for agents to evacuate. The model allows identifying the bottleneck, shelter demand, and causality estimation, in addition to testing the ability of the model to allow vehicular and pedestrian agents to find their own way in evacuation routes. The results indicated that 90% of the population could be evacuated and that, in addition, 520 evacuees could be sheltered in the event.

Kim et al (2013) conducted a hazard analysis for the eastern coast of Korea. They created tsunami hazard maps through analyzing the seismic zones along the coastal area. Researchers developed hypothetical tsunami scenarios to examine inundation characteristics in order to create tsunami hazard maps. The results showed that due to the bathymetric characteristics of the East Sea, tsunamis tend to land on the eastern coast of Korea. Also, the highest tsunami

However, reviewing the evacuation literature for different forms of hazards, including tsunamis, revealed that not all evacuation studies utilize the major evacuation components that were considered by Baker (2000) when calculating clearance time, the ultimate concern -- along with maximization of numbers of evacuees -- of all evacuation studies. In terms of tsunami evacuation, most of the tsunami studies focus on the physical settings of tsunami phases and their impact on the physical environment. This is classified under ‘hazard analysis’ where the physical characteristics of a place contribute to increasing or reducing the impact of a tsunami. Also, identifying the right method of conducting the hazard analysis is critical in developing the remainder of the evacuation analysis. For instance, in Imamura et al (2012), the authors produced hazard maps based on a single earthquake event — a sample less representational than one in which several historical earthquakes were included. Estimating a realistic evacuation clearance time depends not only on the results of a hazard analysis, but also on the results of vulnerability and behavioral analyses; both of these, together, provide details of the demographic variables that significantly affect evacuation clearance time (Charnkol and Tanaboriboon, 2006; Post et al,