Evacuation decisions in response to natural disasters: Insights from a large-scale social media survey

TL;DR

This study uses social media surveys to analyze evacuation decision factors during the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires, providing insights into household evacuation timing and decision-making processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel social media survey method for studying evacuation behavior and assesses its validity alongside cell phone data for disaster response analysis.

Findings

Identifies key household decision factors affecting evacuation timing.

Highlights the variability in evacuation and return times among household members.

Demonstrates social media survey as a viable data collection tool for disaster response studies.

Abstract

Evacuation in response to natural disasters is a complex process involving multiple decision-makers at the personal, household, community, and government levels. Consequently, many disparate factors influence who evacuates, when, and how to respond to a nearby disaster. In this paper, we leverage a novel method of data collection through social media to explore the evacuation response decisions of people in areas affected by the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires. We explore the validity of this data collection method for generating plausible estimates of evacuation and its ability to supplement cell phone location data using survey responses. Ultimately, we identify several key factors influencing household decisions on evacuation, specifically focusing on the phenomenon of household members evacuating or returning from evacuation at different times.