2,3- 1Institute of River and Coastal Engineering, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany (min.lee@tuhh.de)
- 2Institute of River and Coastal Engineering, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany (froehle@tuhh.de)
- 3Department of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan (doong@mail.ncku.edu.tw)
Floods have caused problematic issues for centuries. Due to climate change, floods have become more frequent and intense over the years. Concerns about this natural disaster have turned into awareness. Residents with different backgrounds and perceptions have been reacting differently. More responses have also been implemented in order to minimize the potential casualties, such as strategies, administrative or technical measures. Among them, evacuation is regarded as a vital last-resort measure to protect lives and their property.
The aim of this study is to compile the state-of-the-art of the knowledge on human decision-making in flood emergent scenarios and on the corresponding modeling frameworks. Therefore, this study examined one hundred papers on human decision-making in the evacuation process. Two reference search methods were used to find the relevant topic papers: general searching and the snowball searching method. Using these methodologies, this research organizes the papers into three categories depending on their relation to the topic. This research aims to summarize the reasons why residents eventually choose to evacuate and to categorize the approaches that consider human decision-making within a modeling framework.
The results show that factors such as flood memory, education level, and trust in the government are commonly discussed in the papers. Regarding modeling frameworks, the three main approaches are: a simple mathematical model, System Dynamics (SD), and Agent-Based Model (ABM). Especially, the ABM has been used in many research studies because it can efficiently and effectively simulate flood emergent scenarios, particularly human behaviours. In summary, this paper provides a state-of-the-art review that features structural search methods and organises modeling approaches.
KEYWORDS: risk perception, flood awareness, evacuation process, flood evacuation, human decision-making, modeling framework, System Dynamics, Agent-Based Model
How to cite: Lee, M.-F., Fröhle, P., and Doong, D.-J.: An Overview of Human Decision-making in Flood Emergent Scenarios and Corresponding Modeling Frameworks, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-7847, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-7847, 2026.
