Is it time to go? Using mobility data to examine the timing of hurricane evacuation decisions in response to forecasts

Coastal areas face significant risk from increasingly frequent extreme weather events associated with anthropogenic climate change. The resilience of coastal communities in the face of these risks depend in substantial part on how quickly and smoothly communities can carry out large-scale evacuations when under threat from major extreme events, such as hurricanes.

Evacuation rates in practice often do not match the evacuation rates expected by the emergency management agencies (EM). This mismatch raises the question about the effectiveness of the plans that EM have to execute before, during, and after an extreme event. Answering these questions requires an analysis that connects early warning information about an extreme event, EMs’ corresponding evacuation orders, and the public’s evacuation decisions. The goal of this study therefore is to better understand this chain of EM’s and public’s decision making and study the differential implications of those decisions in different communities.