OPTIMIZATION OF CROWD BEHAVIORS IN A TSUNAMI EVACUATION MODEL, AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO EXPECTED EVACUATION SITUATIONS

Abstract

 Crowd evacuation after a tsunami warning may suffer from stagnant at bottlenecks with congestion. In the present study, we improved a tsunami evacuation model to simulate crowd behaviors with congestion, and it was applied to a crowded beach. It is expected that most of evacuees fail to escape from a significant tsunami under the current guideline of tsunami evacuation. We carried out evacuation simulations with various conditions for the beach and found for a large tsunami scenario with wave height over 7 m that 80% of evacuees would successfully escape by incorporating additional exits and evacuation buildings into the current guideline. For effective evacuations, proactive awareness of potential evacuees for the guideline and appropriate preparation by adimistrators are needed as well as installation of hard countermeasures.