Abstract
Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines in November 2013, causing a severe damage in coastal areas as a result of strong winds and storm surges. Despite the Philippines being a country with a relatively ample experience of typhoon-disaster management, some previous studies have pointed out that evacuations procedures have been delayed due to insufficient perception of storm surges as a life-threatening phenomenon. A survey conducted by the authors in Dec 2015 demonstrated that some residents only started to evacuate after they noticed floodwater that intruded into their houses. The fact of delayed evacuations of some inhabitants, which unavoidably happen in any circumstances, urges the need to further consider optimal evacuation procedure and behaviors under extreme storm surges conditions in order to save more lives. This paper reports findings obtained from the field survey conducted in Tacloban City in pursuance of revealing the evacuation behaviors of residents during Typhoon Haiyan. In addition, this paper includes the presentation of a constructed evacuation simulation model, which aims at investigating optimum evacuation behaviors under storm flooding. The simulation model further questioned the rationale of horizontal evacuation in already flooded condition compared to vertical evacuation inside buildings.
