Proposing behavior-oriented strategies for earthquake emergency evacuation: A behavioral data analysis from New Zealand, Italy and Japan

Abstract Individuals’ safety in an earthquake highly depends on human reactions and emergency behaviours, especially in first evacuation phases and in urban scenarios. To increase community resilience, Civil Defense Bodies in several earthquake prone countries have defined a list of recommended behaviours to take during and after an earthquake. Following those recommended behaviours could avoid exposing people to additional risks and allow them to reach an effective help from rescuers. Nevertheless, previous studies suggested that differences between recommended behaviors and real-life actions exist and increase the probabilities of casualties. Hence, solutions to assist communities in reducing the occurrence of such “unsafe” phenomena are needed. In this work, we adopt a behavioral approach to examine spontaneous real-life behaviours observed through a database of videotapes of earthquakes from New Zealand, Italy, and Japan. The presence of response actions recommended by Civil Defense Bodies of those three Countries is also assessed. Observed behaviors are organized according to evacuation phases, and comparisons between the three Countries results are provided. An uncertainty assessment is performed to investigate the sample size impact on the proposed analysis. Finally, behavioral results are employed to trace possible valuable solutions aimed at increasing community resilience and individuals’ safety, by limiting the impact of hazardous spontaneous behaviors and providing an effective support to evacuees’ decisions as well as possible. Main solutions categories include assistance tools (e.g.: building components, individual devices), educational training (e.g.: by using serious games), evacuation plans according to the probable evacuation process.