Use of Shared-Mobility Services to Accomplish Emergency Evacuation in Urban Areas via Reduction in Intermediate Trips—Case Study in Xi’an, China

Abstract

Under no-notice evacuation scenarios with limited time horizons, the effectiveness of evacuation can be negatively impacted by intermediate trips that are made by family members and the identification of vulnerable populations. The emergence of shared-mobility companies, such as Uber and DiDi, can be considered as a potential means to address above-mentioned concerns. The proposed study explores the utility of shared-mobility services under emergency-evacuation scenarios and makes recommendations to relevant bodies that are based on the obtained and they are discussed herein. The study investigates attitudes of the public, experts, and drivers towards the use of shared-mobility resources during emergency evacuations based on a stated preference survey. Results of questionnaires, driver interviews, and face-to-face expert interviews have been analyzed to validate the feasibility and identify potential problems of leveraging shared-mobility services during evacuation response, especially in metropolitan areas wherein such services are already ubiquitous. Numerical simulations have been performed to quantify potential improvements in the total trip distance and number of evacuees after incorporating the use of shared mobility into emergency-response operations. However, despite the observed improvement in emergency efficiency, certain realistic roadblocks must be overcome. Realization of the proposed objective heavily depends on actionable policy recommendations, provided herein as a reference for the government, emergency management agencies, and shared-mobility companies.

Bridging the gap between evacuations and the sharing economy

“…Given these negative expert opinions, we crafted a survey addressing sharing capacity, willingness to share, and potential reasons against sharing. In contrast to Li et al (2018), which surveyed a general population without disaster experience, we distributed the online survey to individuals impacted by Hurricane Irma in 2017 between October and December 2017 across the state of Florida. The survey offers empirical evidence to answer the third and fourth research questions.…”

“…To our knowledge, no research paper has compiled sharing economy actions during disasters or assessed the willingness of individuals to provide their own resources in a disaster via the sharing economy. While the idea of shared resources has been described before (Wong et al 2018a) and assessed in a Chinese context (Li et al 2018), this paper is the only U.S. study to investigate the application and potential of the broader sharing economy in evacuations. More specifically, we offer archival evidence of past sharing economy actions, expert opinions on shared resource benefits and limitations, and empirical evidence from individuals recently impacted by a disaster on their willingness to provide resources.…”

“…More specifically, we offer archival evidence of past sharing economy actions, expert opinions on shared resource benefits and limitations, and empirical evidence from individuals recently impacted by a disaster on their willingness to provide resources. While Li et al (2018) also interviewed experts on benefits and limitations, the paper surveyed carless individuals, not individuals impacted by a disaster, which helped assess sharing demand. In our paper, we focus on the capacity of shared resources, which is a prerequisite for implementing a shared resource strategy for evacuations.…”

“…These results indicate that resident-oriented networks of shared resources could be feasible in an evacuation. Indeed, research has found that TNCs could be a viable evacuation strategy in China, despite some limitations (Li et al 2018). On the demand side, Li et al (2018) found that 83% of carless individuals would opt to take shared mobility in a hypothetical disaster, indicating a clear community need for shared resources.…”

“…At the same time, officials continue to struggle with managing transportation in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters. With the spread of new technological advances, agencies have an opportunity to leverage new ideas to increase evacuation compliance rates, reduce congestion, support vulnerable populations, and ensure resident safety (Wong et al 2018a;Li et al 2018). One key advance has been the development of the sharing economy, an Internet-based collection of company-to-peer and peer-to-peer transactions where goods and services are shared and obtained.…”