Analysis of Countermeasures for Car Evacuation Against Tsunami Using Traffic-Micro Simulation

Abstract

During the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake, many residents living coastal area used car for their evacuation from mega Tsunami. Due to the rapidly increased traffic demand in road network and also trouble of traffic signals, heavy traffic congestions occurred in the road network. At first, this research investigated the condition of car evacuation in Kesennuma city. Secondly, tsunami evacuation simulation system was developed. Thirdly, several counter-measures for safer tsunami evacuation were developed and proposed. Finally, the scenario of roads widening proposed by Kesennuma city was evaluated using the simulation system. As a result, it was clarified that decreasing of car generation is an effective countermeasure to modify the road traffic flow and that it could not solve the problems in car evacuation perfectly.