Flood evacuation during pandemic: a multi-objective framework to handle compound hazard

Abstract

The evacuation of the population from flood-affected regions is a non-structural measure to mitigate flood hazards. Shelters used for this purpose usually accommodate a large number of flood evacuees for a temporary period. Floods during a pandemic result in a compound hazard. Evacuations under such situations are difficult to plan as social distancing is nearly impossible in the highly crowded shelters. This results in a multi-objective problem with conflicting objectives of maximizing the number of evacuees from flood-prone regions and minimizing the number of infections at the end of the shelter’s stay. To the best of our knowledge, such a problem is yet to be explored in literature. Here we develop a simulation-optimization framework, where multiple objectives are handled with a max–min approach. The simulation model consists of an extended Susceptible—Exposed—Infectious—Recovered—Susceptible model. We apply the proposed model to the flood-prone Jagatsinghpur district in the state of Odisha, India. We find that the proposed approach can provide an estimate of people required to be evacuated from individual flood-prone villages to reduce flood hazards during the pandemic. At the same time, this does not result in an uncontrolled number of new infections. The proposed approach can generalize to different regions and can provide a framework to stakeholders to manage conflicting objectives in disaster management planning and to handle compound hazards.

The challenges of COVID-19 control policies for sustainable development of business: Evidence from service industries

“…Furthermore, these patterns vary across the industries. The results obtained in this study can be used as the inputs for further integrated models for policy support [ 48 ].…”

Superposed Natural Hazards and Pandemics: Breaking Dams, Floods, and COVID-19

“…Hariri-Ardebili [19] proposed a generic framework for regional-level and city-level evacuation and sheltering in pandemic era after a natural hazard. Tripathy et al [77] proposed a multi-objective optimization framework for flood evacuation during pandemic by minimization of the evacuation risk. Maybe another important question is how to evacuate the high risk flood area, especially for the car-less population, elderly people, low income, of a racial minority, or with disabilities?…”

Compound hazards: An examination of how hurricane protective actions could increase transmission risk of COVID-19

“…Earthquakes have sudden onsets or shocks [ 16 ] and lack phases for people to prepare in advance, hurricanes bring new and untold challenges as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. Tripathy, Bhatia, Mohanty, Karmakar, and Ghosh [ 29 ] developed a framework that aims to assist stakeholders in managing compound hazard and ‘conflicting objectives in disaster management planning in the context of flood hazards and COVID-19 in India [ 13 ] have released a non-peer-reviewed study that supports the notion that hurricane evacuation could trigger the number of COVID-19 cases in both evacuated and destination areas. Moreover, “these compound risks will exacerbate and be exacerbated by the unfolding economic crisis and long-standing socioeconomic and racial disparities” [ 30 ].…”