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Abstract ID: 3425
Abstract
Most pedestrian evacuation models have restrictive assumptions that hinder the correct portrayal of the variability in the behavior of individuals in the occurrence of a natural hazard. This work will describe the use of sports event data to relax two of these assumptions and, in turn, better explain the evacuation response of individuals in the event of a tsunami. The two assumptions being addressed in this work include: (a) all individuals have the same evacuation speed, and (b) the evacuation speed of individuals is constant throughout the entire evacuation process. Sports event data will be used to better understand the speed at which different groups would evacuate and how fatigue is a factor that is often going to make this speed non-constant, especially as the distance traveled increases. This work will describe a thorough data analysis of sports event data using parametric and non-parametric methods. Eight different subpopulations, based on age and gender, were identified as they behave similarly in terms of speed and fatigue factor. Results provide the probabilistic models used to describe these subpopulations and further explain how these models can be used to generate different evacuation scenarios: slow, median, fast, and random run.
Keywords
Pedestrian evacuation model, tsunami, non-parametric tests, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing
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1.Introduction
Over time, the occurrence of natural hazards and the devastation they cause has negatively impacted regions all over the world [1, 2]. As some of these natural phenomena cannot be foreseen (e.g. flash floods, tsunamis), government agencies as well as individuals have opted for mitigation measures as a mean to reduce the losses linked to these natural hazards. In the event of a tsunami, mitigation strategies like evacuation planning are considered and, while there are real-life exercises (e.g., Caribe Wave, Lantex) [3, 4] to better educate the population on evacuation routes and procedures, they are not able to capture reality. As opposed to a real-life scenario, no one will panic during a simulation. No one will attempt to drive through a flood to pick up children at school during a simulation. No simulation will trigger all employees from the same corporation to attempt to move their vehicles from the parking lot at the exact same time. While...