Enhancing multi-hazard resilience to tsunami through evacuation simulation : a case study of Napier City : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Construction Management, School of Built Environment, Massey University, New Zealand. EMBARGOED to 11 July 2026.

Abstract

Climate change has intensified the risk of natural hazards, especially tsunamis. This fact has led emergency management decision-makers to question their emergency planning and make coastal cities resilient. Evacuation has been identified as the best course of action in response to tsunamis. Regarding tsunamis, a resilient city must have a resilient evacuation plan. An evacuation plan can be called resilient once all the related infrastructures are resilient and people know how to use them. Based on the literature, simulation has been identified as a reliable source of assessing the resiliency level of infrastructure. Therefore, this doctoral thesis aims to create an evacuation simulation tool that evaluates the resilience of evacuation infrastructure. Recognising the importance of understanding the resilience of the evacuation process in terms of disaster management, current research and practice continually highlight the significance of simulation outputs concerning tsunami responses. Previous evacuation simulation tools primarily focused on monitoring pedestrian movements, neglecting interactions between pedestrians and vehicles. Furthermore, many studies did not consider factors related to human behaviour and decision-making during crises. This study aims to provide fresh insights into evacuation management by incorporating multiple behavioural and spatial factors into the simulation. The outcomes of this research generated realistic evacuation simulation results and translated them into policy and planning protocols.