Considering Psychological Conditions in a Tsunami Evacuation Simulation

Abstract

The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred at 14:46 JST on Friday, March 11, 2011. It was the most powerful earthquake to have hit Japan and was one of the five most powerful earthquakes in the world since modern recordkeeping began in 1900. The earthquake triggered an extremely destructive tsunami with waves of up to 40.5 m in height. In this paper, in preparation for a possible Nankai Trough earthquake, we created a multi-agent tsunami evacuation simulation in Kure city to analyze the evacuation process and determine solutions to any problems. More specifically, we focus on the psychological conditions of people in the disaster area. During times of emergency, it is said that people fall into a psychological condition where they fail to evacuate. Based on the simulation results, we can confirm that people under psychological conditions require more time to evacuate than those in a normal frame of mind. Thus, people need to know more about psychological conditions during times of disaster to evacuate safely and efficiently. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.