Emergency Preparedness in the Case of a Tsunami—Evacuation Analysis and Traffic Optimization for the Indonesian City of Padang

The “Last-Mile Evacuation” research project develops a numerical last mile tsunami early warning and evacuation information system on the basis of detailed earth observation data and techniques as well as unsteady, hydraulic numerical modeling of small-scale flooding and inundation dynamics of the tsunami including evacuation simulations in the urban coastal hinterland for the city of Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia. It is well documented that Sumatra’s third largest city with almost one million inhabitants is located directly on the coast and partially sited beneath the sea level, and thus, is located in a zone of extreme risk due to severe earthquakes and potential triggered tsunamis. “Last-Mile” takes the inundation dynamics into account and additionally assesses the physical-technical susceptibility and the socio-economic vulnerability of the population with the objective to mitigate human and material losses due to possible tsunamis. By means of discrete multi-agent techniques risk-based, time- and site-dependent forecasts of the evacuation behavior of the population and the flow of traffic in large parts of the road system in the urban coastal strip are simulated and concurrently linked with the other components.