2024 Volume 80 Issue 20 Article ID: 24-20061
In principle, evacuation during disasters is supposed to be done on foot, but since more than half of the evacuees in the Great East Japan Earthquake used automobiles, the use of automobiles for evacuation is being considered. On the other hand, since evacuation by car may cause traffic congestion, it is necessary to temporarily expand the traffic capacity. Contraflow is one of the measures to expand traffic capacity. Contraflow has been applied to hurricanes in other countries, and its effectiveness has been confirmed, but there are no examples of its application to disasters in Japan. In this study, I developed a simulation model for evacuation of automobiles in Watari Town, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. I applied the contraflow to a congested area and found that the contraflow can evacuate more vehicles from the flooded area by the effect of the contraflow. In addition, by incorporating hazardous behaviors into the evacuation simulation, I have developed a simulation model that is closer to the reality.
