Evacuate or Not? A POMDP Model of the Decision Making of Individuals in Hurricane Evacuation Zones

Recent hurricanes in the Atlantic region of the southern United States triggered a series of evacuation orders in the coastal cities of Florida, Georgia, and Texas. While some of these urged voluntary evacuations, most were mandatory orders. Despite governments asking people to vacate their homes for their own safety, many do not. We aim to understand the observable and hidden variables involved in the decision-making process and model these in a partially observable Markov decision process, which predicts whether a person will evacuate or not given his or her current situation. We consider the features of the particular hurricane, the dynamic situation that the individual is experiencing, and demographic factors that influence the decision making of individuals. The process model is represented as a dynamic influence diagram and evaluated on data collected via a comprehensive survey of hurricane-impacted individuals.