Increasing Evacuation Communication Through ICTs: An Agent-based Model Demonstrating Evacuation Practices and the Resulting Traffic Congestion in the Rush to the Road
Abstract
Understanding evacuation practices and outcomes helps crisis and disaster personnel plan, manage, and rebuild during disasters. Yet the recent expansion in the number of information and communication technologies (ICTs) available to individuals and organizations has changed the speed and reach of evacuation-related messages. This study explores ICTs’ influences on evacuation decision-making and traffic congestion. Drawing from both social science and transportation science, we develop a model representative of individual decision making outcomes based on the amount of ICT use, evacuation sources, and the degree of evacuation urgency. We compare the evacuation responses when individuals receive both advance notice of evacuation (ANE) and urgent evacuation (UE) messages under conditions of no ICTs and prolific ICT use. Our findings from the scenarios when there is widespread ICT use reveal a shift in the evacuation time-scale, resulting in traffic congestion early in the evacuation cycle. The effects of this congestion in urgent situations are significantly worse than traffic congestion in the advance notice condition. Even under conditions where face-to-face communication is the only option, evacuations still occur, but at a slower rate, and there are virtually no traffic congestion issues. Our discussion elaborates on the theoretical contributions and focuses on how ICTs have changed evacuation behavior. Future research is needed to explore how to compensate for the rush to the road.
Acknowledgments
This material is partially based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation, Grant No. 1254921, the National Communication Association, and the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the International Communication Association Conference, 2015.
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©2015 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Network Disaster Response Effectiveness: The Case of ICTs and Hurricane Katrina
- Principle-Based Design: A Methodology and Principles for Capitalizing Design Experiences for Information Quality Assurance
- Increasing Evacuation Communication Through ICTs: An Agent-based Model Demonstrating Evacuation Practices and the Resulting Traffic Congestion in the Rush to the Road
- Managing Network Based Governance Structures in Disasters: The Case of the Passau Flood in 2013
- Geographic Information Systems for Disaster Response: A Review
- Determinants of Emergency Management Decision Support Software Technology: An Empirical Analysis of Social Influence in Technology Adoption
- Using Social Multimedia Content to Inform Emergency Planning of Recurring and Cyclical Events in Local Communities
- Social Media and the Virality of Risk: The Risk Amplification through Media Spread (RAMS) Model
- Social Media in Crisis: When Professional Responders Meet Digital Volunteers
- Closing the Citizen-Government Communication Gap: Content, Audience, and Network Analysis of Government Tweets
- Re-Tweet Count Matters: Social Influences on Sharing of Disaster-Related Tweets
- Synthetic Environments for Investigating Collaborative Information Seeking: An Application in Emergency Restoration of Critical Infrastructures
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Network Disaster Response Effectiveness: The Case of ICTs and Hurricane Katrina
- Principle-Based Design: A Methodology and Principles for Capitalizing Design Experiences for Information Quality Assurance
- Increasing Evacuation Communication Through ICTs: An Agent-based Model Demonstrating Evacuation Practices and the Resulting Traffic Congestion in the Rush to the Road
- Managing Network Based Governance Structures in Disasters: The Case of the Passau Flood in 2013
- Geographic Information Systems for Disaster Response: A Review
- Determinants of Emergency Management Decision Support Software Technology: An Empirical Analysis of Social Influence in Technology Adoption
- Using Social Multimedia Content to Inform Emergency Planning of Recurring and Cyclical Events in Local Communities
- Social Media and the Virality of Risk: The Risk Amplification through Media Spread (RAMS) Model
- Social Media in Crisis: When Professional Responders Meet Digital Volunteers
- Closing the Citizen-Government Communication Gap: Content, Audience, and Network Analysis of Government Tweets
- Re-Tweet Count Matters: Social Influences on Sharing of Disaster-Related Tweets
- Synthetic Environments for Investigating Collaborative Information Seeking: An Application in Emergency Restoration of Critical Infrastructures