This work presents a literature review on civilian evacuation behavior and agent based modeling for disaster planning. The aim is to understand a regional response to a natural disaster. We propose a study to investigate our study area's disaster plan and civilian response at large during such an event. The implications of our proposed work include improved disaster planning and a framework for modeling civilian response to real government disaster plans

Bodon, Herminio

Cope, Julia

English

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Towards modeling civilian behavior during a natural disaster

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Towards Modeling Civilian Behavior During aNatural DisasterJulia Cope1 and Herminio Bodon1University of Pittsburgh, School of Computing and InformationAbstract. This work presents a literature review on civilian evacuationbehavior and agent based modeling for disaster planning. The aim isto understand a regional response to a natural disaster. We propose astudy to investigate our study area’s disaster plan and civilian responseat large during such an event. The implications of our proposed workinclude improved disaster planning and a framework for modeling civilianresponse to real government disaster plans.Keywords: Decision Making · Evacuation Behavior · Disaster Planning· Human Factors1 IntroductionA natural disaster refers to an event caused by the forces of nature which en-dangers lives. Examples include hurricanes, earthquakes, and forest fires. Morepeople around the world are vulnerable to natural disaster caused devastationdue to increases in population, urbanization, and poverty cycles. An analysis bythe Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) found thatmore money is put into disaster relief than disaster planning and reduction ef-forts. CRED calls for increased evidence-based disaster planning to reduce lossof human life, the priority of disaster mitigation [1]. Governments create disasterplans to set up a course of action in the event of a large scale emergency. Theprimary goal of such plans is to prevent loss of life.Our goal is to understand how civilians find their way to safety during a citywide natural disaster. This knowledge will inform evidence-based disaster plans.We aim to understand what characterizes disaster plans, and if these plans willbe effective in an actual emergency. We also want to understand civilian behaviorduring natural disasters and how this relates to a city’s disaster plan. This workpresents a literature review of research in evacuation behavior and spatial agentbased modeling. We then present a proposal for our future work, which involvesmodeling a disaster plan and civilians’ expected behavior.2 Background2.1 Evacuation BehaviorIn many cases, successful evacuation of an at risk geographic area, will greatlyreduce the number of casualties. For example, in 1999 a cyclone made landfall2 J. Cope et al.with 155 mph winds and caused 10,000 deaths in Odisha India. In 2013, a similarcyclone made landfall with 140 mph winds and caused 14 deaths in the sameOdisha, India. Before the second event, Odisha implemented a zero-casualtiespolicy where almost one million people were evacuated to safer areas, resultingin strikingly fewer casualties. The government provided medical aid, supplies,and over 250 public shelters [2]. Adequate planning and policy for evacuationand resource distribution results in more people making their way to safety.In order to plan for disasters, decision makers must first understand whatto expect during a large scale disaster. Previous research investigates how riskperception affects an individual or household’s decision to evacuate in the wake ofa natural disaster [3, 4]. Prior evacuation and having an evacuation plan also ledto more likely evacuation in a given event. Mandatory evacuation notices, ratherthan voluntary notices, led to more likely evacuation. Friends or family memberstelling a person to evacuate also led to more likely evacuation. Many factors affectan individual’s perception of risk, and affect the decision to evacuate to safetyor remain at risk [3].Dash et al. [4] calls for spatially related prediction methods for public offi-cials to use during disaster planning and relief. Warnings of any kind instigateindividual evacuation decision making. Factors affecting risk perception can beused to predict evacuation rates [4], an important consideration during disasterplanning. If decision makers know areas that are more likely to evacuate, theymay be able to tailor warning information pre-event and resource distributionpost-event. Understanding the civilian response to natural disasters will helpdecision makers create evidence-based plans.2.2 Agent Based ModelingAgent based modeling (ABM) allows for simulation of individual agents in dy-namically changing states, and analysis of the characteristics of the system as awhole [5]. ABM has been used for simulating evacuation behaviors during emer-gencies in the past [4, 6, 7]. Civilians often do not act as evacuation managersexpect during emergencies [6]. Modeling behavior based on realistic human be-havior can help evacuation managers understand what to expect from civiliansduring large-scale disasters.Participatory modeling involves non-technical disaster managers with devel-opers from the beginning of the model design process [8]. This approach allowsfor models to be created and used for decision making. The use of a graphi-cal modeling tool, such as GAMA, allows for disaster managers and developersto create an entire version of a model using a graphical user interface. This isuseful for allowing disaster managers to understand and take part in the initialdevelopment [8]. Participatory modeling provides a way to test the impacts ofproposed plans and to communicate with data and visualizations where thingsmay go wrong in the plan [9].ABM has been applied to spatial models of cities to simulate disaster responseand policy changes [6, 9, 10]. Adam et al. simulated the Australian bush firesusing publicly available data from different sources [6]. Crooks et al. presentsTowards Modeling Civilian Behavior During a Natural Disaster 3an ABM and GIS framework and simulates humanitarian response to an earth-quake using different data sources [10]. Spatial ABMs allow for a city to createa personalized simulation for their unique needs.3 Proposed ResearchThe proposed study will improve understanding of civilian spatial behavior dur-ing a large scale natural disaster. We are interested in how civilians find theirway to safety given the disaster plan set up by the government and given theirinteractions with other civilians. We intend to represent individual civilians asagents in a spatio-temporal model of a region during a flood disaster. CREDstates that floods have reportedly affected over 2.6 billion people over the past30 years [1]. Our work will focus on floods because that is the most commontype of natural disaster which threatens the surrounding area of our city on theEast Coast of the United States, our region of study.We will gather data to understand the state of our study area’s disasterplanning for floods. We intend to use both qualitative and quantitative datafor the creation of the model. We are continuing to review the literature forbest practices and sources of data. Some sources we will consider based on theliterature are volunteered sources of information such as social media and OpenStreet Map, qualitative interviews with civilians and emergency personnel, andother official documents detailing the city’s disaster plan [10, 6]. Furthermore,we will use past studies [3, 4] to define civilian agents disaster related behaviors.We will use the data we gather from multiple sources to create an agentbased model the simulates the city’s response plan and civilian behavior. Wewill analyse the model to understand what geographic areas or demographicsof people are most at risk for not making it to safety. We will then make ourrecommendations for changes to the disaster plan based on our simulations. Thismodel will help the city understand if it is equipped to handle a large scale flood.Different extremes and situations will be tested. We will evaluate the model bycomparing the simulation to the events of a real flood event in the region. We willanalyse the results of simulation based on expected number of people affectedand economic loss. The primary goal will be finding a disaster plan that preventsthe most loss of life.3.1 LimitationsA limitation of the proposed study is that human behavior is difficult to predict,as it is quite complex [5]. Some factors, such as demographics, which affectevacuation behavior have positive or negative correlation depending on otherfactors [3, 4].Some limitations of ABM are that ABM can be very time and computation-ally consuming [5]. ABM is an effective research methodology, yet is not widelyused in the public sphere, although there is work towards more stakeholder par-ticipation [8].4 J. Cope et al.4 ConclusionIn this work, we presented a literature review of typical civilian evacuation be-havior. We also proposed the creation of an agent based model based on variousdata sources that simulates our study area in the event of a flood. By lookingclosely at a disaster plan and predicting civilian response patterns, we aim toinform the improvement of the disaster plan. We also aim to demonstrate theapplicability of a disaster planning and civilian behavior model to other regionsand event types.References1. Guha-Sapir, D., Hargitt, D., Hoyois, P.: Thirty years of natural disasters 1974-2003:The numbers. Presses univ. de Louvain (2004).2. Cyclone Phailin kills 14, leaves trail of destruction in India - CNN,https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/13/world/asia/india-cyclone-phailin-aftermath/index.html, last accessed 2019/09/23.3. Thompson, R. R., Garfin, D. R., Silver, R. C.: Evacuation from natural disasters: asystematic review of the literature. Risk analysis 37(4), 812-839 (2017).4. Dash, N., Gladwin, H.: Evacuation decision making and behavioral responses: Indi-vidual and household. Natural Hazards Review 8(3), 69-77 (2007).5. Bonabeau, E.: Agent-based modeling: Methods and techniques for simulating humansystems. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences 99(suppl 3), 7280-7287(2002).6. Adam, C., Gaudou, B.: Modelling human behaviours in disasters from interviews:application to Melbourne bushfires. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simu-lation (2017).7. Yang, H., Morgul, E. F., Ozbay, K., Xie, K.: Modeling evacuation behavior underhurricane conditions. Transportation research record 2599(1), 63-69 (2016).8. Taillandier, P., Grignard, A., Marilleau, N., Philippon, D., Huynh, Q. N., Gaudou,B., Drogoul, A.: Participatory Modeling and Simulation with the GAMA platform.Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 22(2), 1-3 (2019).9. Alonso, L., Zhang, Y. R., Grignard, A., Noyman, A., Sakai, Y., ElKatsha, M.,Larson, K.: Cityscope: a data-driven interactive simulation tool for urban design.Use case volpe. In: International Conference on Complex Systems, pp. 253-261.Springer, Cham (2018).10. Crooks, A. T., Wise, S.: GIS and agent-based models for humanitarian assistance.Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 41, 100-111 (2013).

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Towards modeling civilian behavior during a natural disaster

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