An evaluation of fluidics for tsunamis in pedestrian’s flood evacuations

In recent years, earthquakes have been observed at an increasing rate. A large-scale earthquake may lead to a tsunami, which could cause floods in urban areas. The evacuation of pedestrians in front of an approaching tsunami is difficult due to the speed of the water. Advanced evacuations are important in floods and can be achieved by coupling pedestrian simulation with a multi-agent system (MAS) and flood simulation with the shallow water equation. However, there may be some situations in which evacuators must ensure sufficient time for evacuation. Therefore, the authors of the present study developed fluidics to increase the time available for pedestrian evacuation by reducing the speed of the water to approximately one-third of its original speed. In this paper, the authors evaluate the effectiveness of fluidics for tsunamis in pedestrian flood evacuations. The results of the simulation indicate that fluidics can mitigate the speed of a spreading flood and thus increase the time available for evacuation. Therefore, we can confirm that the presently developed fluidics would effectively improve pedestrian evacuations in tsunamis.