Optimal evacuation decision policies for Benue flood disaster in Nigeria

Abstract

This research develops a probabilistic evacuation decision policy model to determine the optimal decision for the cases of no evacuation, evacuation, and delay decision at a particular point in time in the event of a threatening flood disaster adapted to the case of Nigeria. This work explores the use of decision tree analysis and a program written in MATLAB to solve problems arising from the models to determine the optimal decision. An application to the case of Benue flood 2012 reveals that earlier evacuation would have saved the decision-maker (government) almost 4-times less than the cost incurred after evacuation was initiated at later time.