Estimate of the Number of People Walking Home After Compliance with Metropolitan Tokyo Ordinance on Measures Concerning Stranded Persons

• Published in: Advances and New Trends in Environmental Informatics pp. 17 - 35
• Main Authors: Osaragi, Toshihiro, Hamada, Tokihiko, Kishimoto, Maki
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2019; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Progress in IS
• Subjects: Intention of returning home; Nested logit model; Ordinance covering measures for stranded persons; Questionnaire survey
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-30862-9_2
• ISBN: 9783030308612; 3030308618
• ISSN: 2196-8705

The Metropolitan Tokyo Ordinance on Measures Concerning Stranded Persons (hereafter, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Ordinance (TMGO)) was enacted in April, 2013 as part of efforts to encourage employers and schools to keep their employees, students, or young children in place, rather than freeing them set out for home when public transportation has been paralyzed by a major earthquake or other disaster. However, whether a person decides to return home or not depends on his or her individual attributes and other factors such as the presence of family members at home, and it is uncertain whether the TMGO will actually be effective in reducing the number of people attempting to return home. Therefore, a survey on individual courses of action after a major earthquake was conducted. This data was employed to construct a probabilistic model for predicting whether an individual will “try to walk home”, “try to return to, or stay in, his/her workplace or school”, or “try to take some other action”, based on the individual’s attributes and the walking distances. This model was applied to person-trip survey data in the Tokyo metropolitan area to estimate the numbers of people walking home after a major earthquake, after which a quantitative prediction of the effectiveness of the TMGO on attempts to return home was made.