Analysis of Flood Evacuation Process in Vulnerable Community with Mutual Aid Mechanism: An Agent-Based Simulation Framework

Zhiqiang Wang, Jing Huang, Huimin Wang, Jinle Kang and Weiwei Cao
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Zhiqiang Wang: State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Jing Huang: State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Huimin Wang: State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Jinle Kang: State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Weiwei Cao: State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: Timely and secure evacuation of residents during flood disasters or other emergency events is an important issue in urban community flood risk management, especially in vulnerable communities. An agent-based modeling framework was proposed in order to indicate how the community properties (e.g., community density and percentage of vulnerable residents), residents’ psychological attributes (e.g., flood risk tolerance threshold) and mutual aid mechanism affect the flood evacuation process. Results indicated that: (1) The community density negatively affected the flood evacuation efficiency. The greater the density of the community, the longer the evacuation time. (2) There was a negative correlation between the flood risk tolerance threshold of residents and evacuation efficiency. (3) The proportion of vulnerable resident agents had opposite effects on the evacuation efficiency of different types of communities, which was to negatively affect low-density communities and positively affect high-density communities. (4) Mutual aid mechanism can reduce evacuation time in low-density communities, and the effect was more pronounced with a higher proportion of vulnerable resident agents in the community. These findings can help managers to develop better emergency evacuation management for urban communities.

Keywords: flood evacuation; vulnerable community; mutual aid mechanism; agent-based model; simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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