Post-disaster evacuation and temporary resettlement considering panic and panic spread

Hu, Zhi-Hua; Sheu, Jiuh-Biing; Xiao, Ling

Abstract After a disaster, a huge number of homeless victims should be evacuated to temporary resettlement sites. However, because the number of temporary shelters is insufficient, as are shelter building capabilities, victims must be evacuated and resettled in batches. The perceived psychological penalty to victims may increase due to heightened panic when waiting for evacuation and resettlement, whereas psychological interventions can decrease the magnitude of this panic. Based on the susceptible–infective-removal model, panic spread among homeless victims and other disaster-affected people is modeled, while considering the effects of psychological interventions on panic spread. A function is derived to compute the increase in the number of victims to be evacuated due to panic spread. A novel mixed-integer linear program is constructed for multi-step evacuation and temporary resettlement under minimization of panic-induced psychological penalty cost, psychological intervention cost, and costs associated with transportation and building shelters. The model is solved by aggregating objectives into a single objective by assigning weights to these objectives. With Wenchuan County as the test case, the epicenter of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the influence and the sensitivity of parameters, tradeoff among costs, and the effects of various functions of panic strength on psychological penalty and monetary costs are assessed using six experimental scenarios. Analytical results reveal the complexity and managerial insights gained by applying the proposed method to post-disaster evacuation and temporary resettlement.