Agent-based Simulation of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake/Tsunami Evacuation: An Integrated Model of Tsunami Inundation and Evacuation

Abstract

The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake/Tsunami was a magnitude 9.0 Mw event that destroyed most structural tsunami countermeasures. However, approximately 90% of the estimated population at risk from the tsunami survived due to rapid evacuation to higher ground or inland. In this paper, we introduce an evacuation model integrated with a numerical simulation of a tsunami and a casualty estimation evaluation. The model was developed in Netlogo, a multi-agent programming language and modeling environment for simulating complex phenomena. GIS data are used as spatial input information for road and shelter locations. Tsunami departure curves are used as the start time for agents deciding to evacuate in the model. Pedestrians and car drivers decide their own goals and search for a suitable route through algorithms that are also used in the video game and artificial intelligence fields. Bottleneck identification, shelter demand, and casualty estimation are some of the applications of the simulator. A case study of the model is presented for the village of Arahama in the Sendai plain area of Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. A stochastic simulation with 1,000 repetitions of evacuation resulted in a mean of 82.1% (SD=3.0%) of the population evacuated, including a total average of 498 agents evacuating to a multi-story shelter. The results agree with the reported outcome of 90% evacuation and 520 sheltered evacuees in the event. The proposed model shows the capability of exploring individual parameters and outcomes. The model allows observation of the behavior of individuals in the complex process of tsunami evacuation. This tool is important for the future evaluation of evacuation feasibility and shelter demand analysis.

A method for tsunami risk assessment: a case study for Kamakura, Japan

“…Tsunami models were run in 2D, and evacuation behavior was modeled with respect to tsunami arrival time and human behavior (Goto et al 2012;Mas et al 2012). However, complete risk assessments and evaluations including cost-benefit assessments were generally not performed.…”

Hypothetical Tsunami Scenarios and Evacuation Intention: A Case Study of Orange County, California

“…These challenges have prompted studies that have employed the use of simulation models in which different data inputs and modeling approaches, such as [17,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31], were used to study various tsunami inundation scenarios. While this research doesn't focus on producing a new tsunami modeling approach, it mainly utilizes the product of an existing tsunami model, one created for the purpose of simulating tsunami inundation from different tsunami events: the Method of Splitting Tsunami (MOST) Model.…”

Recent Advances in Agent-Based Tsunami Evacuation Simulations: Case Studies in Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and Peru

“…Gradually, the research methodology has moved toward using much more data with finer levels of detail through agent-based modeling and high-performance computing (WIJERATHNE et al 2013). In addition, the importance of human behavior in evacuations is increasingly being considered in models (SUZUKI and IMAMURA 2005;MAS et al 2012;FUJIOKA et al 2002). Following the 2004 IOT and 2011 GEJT, tsunami evacuation modelers have focused on providing practical applications of simulations to solve the particular problems that were observed in these events, such as evacuation timing, bottlenecks and traffic congestion from vehicle evacuations, shelter locations, evacuee behavior, and risk communication, among other factors.…”