Massive geolocation data reveal evacuation behaviour during the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake and tsunami

TL;DR

This study uses large-scale geolocation data from a smartphone app to analyze evacuation behavior during the 2024 Noto Peninsula tsunami, revealing rapid evacuation times and factors influencing people's responses.

Contribution

It introduces a novel data-driven approach using massive geolocation data to study evacuation behavior during a tsunami, overcoming limitations of traditional surveys.

Findings

Evacuations occurred within 2-6 minutes after the earthquake.

Strong ground shaking and holiday timing drove rapid evacuations.

People returned to the coast 20-100 minutes before official warning downgrades.

Abstract

On 1 January 2024, devastating tsunamis caused by the Noto Peninsula earthquake hit coastal areas within several minutes, but only two tsunami casualties were officially reported. Despite its importance, the cause of this unexpectedly low human loss was unclear because of the limited access to the peninsula and the presence of many visitors during the holiday, which made conducting conventional surveys infeasible. Here, we reveal evacuation behaviour during the 2024 Noto Peninsula tsunami using massive geolocation data collected from a smartphone app. By analysing these massive data, which include over 1.5 million records collected on this day, we find that the evacuation was extremely fast, occurring within 2--6 minutes after the origin time. Further analyses suggest that these fast departures were driven mainly by strong ground shaking; the fact that the tsunami occurred during the family-oriented New Year holiday was also a key factor. Additionally, the long-term analysis of the data reveals that people started returning to the coastal area 20--100 minutes after the origin time, which was long before the downgrading and cancellation of the tsunami warnings. These results highlight the utility of the innovative data-driven approach to evacuation surveys, which addresses the limitations of conventional evacuation surveys.