Evacuation behavior and fatality during the 2011 Tohoku tsunami

The 2011 Great East Japan earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves, causing disastrous damages in a vast area and took more than 18,000 lives. Despite the unprecedented disaster, some of the buildings and concrete bridges located in tsunami-inundated areas survived and functioned as effective shelters for those who evacuated. It indicates that the disaster could be the product of other factors such as behavioral or environmental factor. In order to study the human impact in the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, it investigates the relationships among evacuation behaviors (i.e., evacuation starting time), preparedness before the disaster, and evacuee’s characteristics and survival rate of the 2011 disaster. Results show that behaviors during the disaster differentiated for the survivors and the dead and missing. A model is developed based on the analysis of each evacuation behavior factors on the fatalities; integrated strategies are proposed and discussed for the reduction of casualties in the future large-scaled natural disasters.