Flood Evacuation Behavior Analysis in Urban Areas

Abstract

Flooding is a reoccurring natural disaster in Thailand and profoundly affects people’s livelihood and economy. Understanding evacuation behavior is very important for flood preparedness planning. This paper aims to investigate the behaviors of urban inhabitants in traveling and evacuating before, during, and after the flooding. The questionnaire survey was conducted to interview the affected inhabitants in Hat Yai municipality as a case study. Applying logistic regression technique, the interview data are then used to develop two flood evacuation models, including evacuation decision model and evacuation mode choice model. The results reveal that gender, the number of adults and disabled persons are three significant factors influencing the decision making and the majority of evacuees prefer using private vehicles during the evacuation. The authors believe that the results would be helpful for local agencies in flood preparedness planning, and the concept of this study can be more rigorously applied to other areas.