From Social Networks to Evacuation Traveler Decision Making: Exploratory Departure Time Choice Modeling and Simulation

Natural and man-made disasters lead to massive human, economic, and social losses. The frequency and severity of these disasters creates the need for more effective evacuation strategies. Recent events, namely Hurricane Katrina (the single most expensive and among the five deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history), have demonstrated that human behavior during an evacuation is complex and difficult to predict accurately. Analysis of human behavior during similar extreme events has also shown that social interactions have a significant impact on decision making logic. As such, the objective of this paper is to account for social interactions and the role of an individuals' social network in the transportation evacuation model. The authors begin on the microscopic level by developing a method for forming links between individuals based on common characteristics. Next, they move to the macroscopic level and utilize a latent space approach to determine the influence individuals have on one another within a social network. Finally, the microscopic and macroscopic data are combined within the framework of a choice model in order to transform the social data into a binary decision variable; either to evacuate or not to evacuate. These decision variables form a demand loading scheme which can be used to simulate evacuation scenarios in a transportation simulation software.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB10(4) Emergency Evacuation
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Schorr, Justin
  • Hamdar, Samer H
  • Robertson, Jason
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2012-1-22 to 2012-1-26
• Date: 2012

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 91st Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Behavior; Choice models; Decision making; Disasters and emergency operations; Evacuation; Psychological aspects; Social factors
• Candidate Terms: Social networking
• Subject Areas: Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Security and Emergencies; Society; Transportation (General); I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01372666
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 12-3102
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Jun 15 2012 4:03PM