A Conceptual Design of Spatio-Temporal Agent-Based Model for Volcanic Evacuation

The understanding of evacuation processes is important for improving the effectiveness of evacuation plans in the event of volcanic disasters. In terms of social processes, the enactment of evacuations in volcanic crises depends on the variability of individual/household responses. This variability of population response is related to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the hazard characteristics of volcanoes—specifically, the exact moment at which the eruption occurs (temporal), the magnitude of the eruption and which locations are impacted (spatial). In order to provide enhanced evacuation planning, it is important to recognise the potential problems that emerge during evacuation processes due to such variability. Evacuation simulations are one approach to understanding these processes. However, experimenting with volcanic evacuations in the real world is risky and challenging, and so an agent-based model is proposed to simulate volcanic evacuation. This paper highlights the literature gap for this topic and provides the conceptual design for a simulation using an agent-based model. As an implementation, an initial evacuation model is presented for Mount Merapi in Indonesia, together with potential applications of the model for supporting volcanic evacuation management, discussion of the initial outcomes and suggestions for future work.