Evacuation Simulation under Threat of Wildfire—An Overview of Research, Development, and Knowledge Gaps

Abstract

Wildfires have become a common incident over the past decades, and they have been threatening people’s lives and assets. In the communities close to wildlands or wildland–urban interfaces (WUI), these threats become increasingly serious, and in case of wildfires, people are advised or often have to evacuate the area to save their lives. In order to have a safe and effective evacuation, data on people’s behavior and decisions during wildfires, evacuation modeling, and traffic simulations are required. This paper reviews past and recent research on evacuation, human behavior in wildfires, evacuation modeling, and traffic simulation. Similar research on evacuation in other situations is also reviewed, and the applicability of the models and simulations on wildfires is discussed. Different stages for an evacuation modeling design are assessed, and the gaps and challenges in obtaining an effective evacuation model are presented.

Planning Wildfire Evacuation in the Wildland–Urban Interfaces of Central Portugal

“…Once this threshold is breached by the fire, communities should be triggered for evacuation [33,34]. To this end, various software programs have been developed to work with evacuation at different scales and with different possibilities [35]. However, these models typically lack detailed features that account for the interaction between wildfire behaviour and the evacuation behaviour of WUI residents.…”

“…In fact, factors such as age, sex, culture, race, impairments, occupation type (whether residents or tourists), and income influence each evacuee's decision-making process and should be considered. Moreover, proximity to wildfire hazards significantly impacts evacuees' decision and behaviour [35].…”