Analysis of Tsunami Evacuation from Combined Effects of Spatiotemporal and Personal/ Social Characteristics

Keywords: Tsunami, Evacuation, Behavior, Cognition, GIS
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

Previous studies on tsunami disaster prevention have focused on decision making of evacuation, and there was a lack of understanding of how the behavioral patterns after the initiation of evacuation are formed. In this study, the combined effects of spatiotemporal characteristics and personal/social characteristics on evacuation behavior were analyzed.
　Tsunami evacuation behaviors at the same location were assumed to be different for each person because of the combined effects of personal and social characteristics as well as the spatiotemporal characteristics of the location. Specifically, the distance from the coastline, elevation, and elapsed time after the earthquake were taken as spatiotemporal characteristics, gender, age, and tsunami cognition as personal characteristics, employment status, availability of tsunami information, means of transportation, and presence of accompanying persons as social characteristics. To analyze the various characteristics in a complex manner, this study applied a qualitative GIS method that combines qualitative data such as tsunami cognition with quantitative data such as elevation.
　As a result, the closer the activity location at the time of the earthquake was to the sea, the more likely it was that evacuation (single trip) would be taken, and conversely, the further inland the location was, the more likely it was that no movement or multi-purpose movement would occur. It was also found that women who were aware that a tsunami would come and who had children under elementary school age in the household tended to make multi-purpose movement.