12. Adaptation of Behavior to Overcome Natural Disasters

This chapter deals with how people adapt their lives to natural disasters, such as flood, cyclone, extreme weather events, earthquake, and sea level rise. With the changing global climate, the disasters would appear more frequently and seriously. However, it is still uncertain where the disasters will occur nearby personal daily activity areas, and how great the impacts on human life will be. Surprisingly, literature review suggests that relevant studies are very limited, especially in the context of developing countries. Targeting Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate and the sixth most vulnerable to floods, this chapter describes three case studies on people’s adaptation behaviors under the impacts of different flooding and cyclone scenarios in future by focusing on intercity travel behavior, job and residential location choice behavior, and tourism behavior respectively. Various findings are derived, which are useful to help identify the barriers to the adoption of adaptation measures, the roles of different stakeholders in implementing adaptation measures, and the directions of adaptation measures in the future.