Analysing vulnerability of road network and guiding evacuees to sheltered areas: Case study of Mt Merapi, Central Java, Indonesia

Historically people traded the risk of living in dangerous places such as volcanic slopes for the benefit of farming in rich soils. Road network around risk prone area plays a key role in saving lives when evacuation is required in an emergency, and thus needs to be in full preparedness to face the eventuality. This will need analysing vulnerability to disruption and identifying critical network links of the evacuation routes. It is also crucial to ensure that the evacuees are aware of recommended routes to sheltered areas. Traffic models to assess road network performance due to natural disasters have been developed in the past. But few researchers investigated whether the evacuees are aware of the recommended routes to sheltered areas and whether they are willing to use them indeed. This paper adopts a vulnerability index and identifies network links to improve, by mapping them to a simple ‘traffic light style’ congestion scale. A special mobile phone application software was developed to guide the residents to reach sheltered areas which takes account of the fact that a third of the residents living around Mt Merapi are not aware of evacuation routes to sheltered areas.