Our manuscript on evacuation travel planning versus everyday travel

A new manuscript:

Liu, S., Murray-Tuite, P. & Schweitzer, L., 2012, Analysis of child pick-up during daily routines and for daytime no-notice evacuations, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 46(1), pp. 48-67.

From the abstract:
In a no-notice disaster (e.g., nuclear explosion, terrorist attack, or hazardous materials release), an evacuation may start immediately after the disaster strikes. When a no-notice evacuation occurs during the daytime, household members are scattered throughout the regional network, and some family members (e.g., children) may need to be picked up. This household pick-up and gathering behavior was seldom investigated in previous work due to insufficient data; this gap in our understanding about who within families handles child-gathering is addressed here. Three hundred fifteen interviews were conducted in the Chicago metropolitan area to ascertain how respondents planned their response to hypothetical no-notice emergency evacuation orders. This paper presents the influencing factors that affect household pick-up and gathering behavior/expectations and the logistic regression models developed to predict the probability that parents pick up a child in three situations: a normal weekday and two hypothetical emergency scenarios. The results showed that both mothers and fathers were more likely to plant to pick up a child under emergency conditions than they were on a normal weekday. For a normal weekday, increasing the distance between parents and children decreased the probability of parents picking up children; in other words, the farther parents are from their children, the less likely they will pick them up. In an emergency, effects of distance on pick-up behavior were significant for women, but not significant for men; that is, increasing the distance between parents and children decreased the probability that mothers pick up a child, but had a less significant effect on the fathers’ probability. Another significant factor affecting child pick-up behavior/expectations was household income when controlling for distance. The results of this study confirm that parents expect to gather children under emergency conditions, which needs to be accounted for in evacuation planning; failure to do so could cause difficulties in executing the pick-ups, lead to considerable queuing and rerouting, and extend the time citizens are exposed to high levels of risk.

More children in peril: flooding and extreme events

Recent Floods Leave Children at Risk

From UNICEF:

Devastating floods have left hundreds of thousands of children at risk of disease, malnutrition and exploitation in:

Sri Lanka – The entire eastern region submerged in water. More than 1 million people affected.
Brazil – Worst floods in decades. More than 800 dead and 15,000 homeless.
Philippines – 500,000 people homeless after a month of nonstop rains. More rain on the way.
Pakistan – New data shows floods’ legacy – record-high child malnutrition.

UNICEF has mobilized in all four countries to immunize children, supply safe drinking water and to distribute bed nets, nutrition and sanitation supplies. UNICEF is also working to safeguard children separated from their families.

> Support emergency flood relief