Dynamic-data-driven agent-based modeling for the prediction of evacuation behavior during hurricanes

Seunghan Lee, Saurabh Jain, Keeli Ginsbach, Young Jun Son

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

Establishing an efficient disaster management strategy against severe natural disasters is essential to mitigate and relieve their catastrophic consequences. In order to understand the situation during such devastating events, it is crucial to incorporate individuals' behaviors and their decision-making processes, which requires an amalgamation of information from various sources such as survey data, information regarding location and intensity of disasters, government's policies, and supplies in the affected region. This work proposes a dynamic-data-driven model for individual decision-making processes capable of tracking people's preference value over time, incorporating dynamic environmental changes using Bayesian updates. An agent-based simulation was used to model each of the components vital to devise an effective disaster management strategy. Moreover, the proposed model allows deriving quantitative relationships among people's evacuations, their demographic information, and risk perception based on environmental changes, including traffic status, gas outage, and government notice. For this study, the authors considered Florida's situations during hurricanes Irma, Michael, and Dorian in 2017, 2018, and 2019. What-if analyses were also conducted to find the best disaster management policy for government agencies to minimize the hurricane's effect, which will help prepare for future disaster situations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number102193
JournalSimulation Modelling Practice and Theory
Volume106
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Agent-based simulation
  • Disaster management
  • Dynamic-data-driven modeling
  • Evacuation behaviors
  • Hurricanes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Hardware and Architecture

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