Impacts of Human Behavioral Heterogeneity on the Benefits of Probabilistic Flood Warnings: An Agent‐Based Modeling Framework

Abstract

Flood forecasts and warnings are intended to reduce flood‐related property damages and loss of human life. Considerable research has improved flood forecasting accuracy (e.g., more accurate prediction of the occurrence of flood events) and lead time. However, the delivery of improved forecast information alone is not necessarily sufficient to reduce flood damage and loss of life, as people have varying responses and reactions to flood warnings. This study develops an agent‐based modeling framework that evaluates the impacts of heterogeneity in human behaviors (i.e., variation in behaviors in response to flood warnings), as well as residential density, on the benefits of flood warnings. The framework is coupled with a traffic model to simulate evacuation processes within a road network under various flood warning scenarios. The results show the marginal benefit associated with providing better flood warnings is significantly constrained if people behave in a more risk‐tolerant manner, especially in high‐density residential areas. The results also show significant impacts of human behavioral heterogeneity on the benefits of flood warnings, and thus stress the importance of considering human behavioral heterogeneity in simulating flood warning‐response systems. Further study is suggested to more accurately model human responses and behavioral heterogeneity, as well as to include more attributes of residential areas to estimate and improve the benefits of flood warnings.

Exploring the Role of Social Media and Individual Behaviors in Flood Evacuation Processes: An Agent‐Based Modeling Approach

“…We consider a residential area consisting of households and a transportation network. Following the approach of our prior work (Du et al, ), the transportation network in this paper is represented by a directed graph consisting of a number of links (i.e., roads) and nodes (i.e., road intersections). Each household is represented by an agent with a set of attributes and rules that describe the agent's geographical location, risk‐tolerance threshold for flooding, priorities to the various information sources, and learning attitudes, etc.…”

“…When multiple vehicles approach at the same road intersection, vehicles' right‐of‐way proceeds following the order of their arrival times. For details of the N‐S model and how it is implemented to simulate agents' evacuation process, see Nagel and Schreckenberg (), Nagel and Rickert (), and Du et al ().…”

“…Some studies have modeled individuals' evacuation behaviors as responses to flood warnings (Chen & Zhan, ; Dawson et al, ; Du et al, ; Zhang et al, ). For example, Dawson et al () integrated a hydrodynamic model and a traffic model to estimate the number of people exposed to floods under varying storm surge conditions.…”

“…For example, Dawson et al () integrated a hydrodynamic model and a traffic model to estimate the number of people exposed to floods under varying storm surge conditions. Furthermore, Du et al () investigated how individuals' evacuation behaviors are affected by their heterogeneous responses to flood warnings, as well as flood prediction accuracy and lead time. The results show that residents' evacuation behaviors can be significantly affected by various individuals' flood risk‐tolerance thresholds.…”

Assessment of Flood Losses with Household Responses: Agent-Based Simulation in an Urban Catchment Area

“…Though the modeling results were not surprising that targeted communication can be more effective than common communication, it demonstrated the significance of human behavior in flood risk management. Similarly, the heterogeneity of human behavior was tested with ABM in floods of a hypothetical case area which also showed the necessity to identify individual activities in smallscale flood management [41]. In addition, the ABM application in human decision-making also revealed the role of human behavior in prospected flood risks [42] and the significance of flood insurance in a public-private partnership [43].…”