Cross-comparative analysis of evacuation behavior after earthquakes using mobile phone data

PloS One
Takahiro YabeSatoshi Ikemoto

Abstract

Despite the importance of predicting evacuation mobility dynamics after large scale disasters for effective first response and disaster relief, our general understanding of evacuation behavior remains limited because of the lack of empirical evidence on the evacuation movement of individuals across multiple disaster instances. Here we investigate the GPS trajectories of a total of more than 1 million anonymized mobile phone users whose positions were tracked for a period of 2 months before and after four of the major earthquakes that occurred in Japan. Through a cross comparative analysis between the four disaster instances, we find that in contrast to the assumed complexity of evacuation decision making mechanisms in crisis situations, an individual's evacuation probability is strongly dependent on the seismic intensity that they experience. In fact, we show that the evacuation probabilities in all earthquakes collapse into a similar pattern, with a critical threshold at around seismic intensity 5.5. This indicates that despite the diversity in the earthquakes profiles and urban characteristics, evacuation behavior is similarly dependent on seismic intensity. Moreover, we found that probability density functions of the distanc...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Feb 20, 2020·Journal of the Royal Society, Interface·Takahiro YabeSatish V Ukkusuri
Sep 22, 2020·Information Systems Frontiers : a Journal of Research and Innovation·Yanxin WangXin Robert Luo

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