Position Paper A preliminary combined simulation tool for the risk assessment of pedestrians’ flood-induced evacuation Gabriele Bernardini, Matteo Postacchini, Enrico Quagliarini * , Maurizio Brocchini, Caterina Cianca, Marco D'Orazio Department of Civil and Building Engineering and Architecture, Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy article info Article history: Received 19 October 2016 Received in revised form 22 March 2017 Accepted 15 June 2017 Keywords: Urban flood Flood evacuation Pedestrians' evacuation Behavioural model Social force model abstract Flood risk assessment in urban regions does not account for human behaviours during emergency. Understanding behaviours during floods and developing related simulators highlight critical phenomena for individuals' safety, during and after the flood, and suggest risk-reduction strategies aimed at helping evacuees. The proposed Flooding Pedestrians' Evacuation Dynamics Simulator (FlooPEDS) combines flood hydrodynamics (based on Nonlinear Shallow Water Equations) and individuals' evacuation (by modifying the Social Force Model). FlooPEDS capabilities are illustrated with reference to an important case study. Results focus on evacuees’ motion and path choices. This preliminary simulator imple- mentation, still raw for practical use by planners and authorities, is already mature to guide the design of innovative resilience-increasing urban solutions (i.e.: architectural components like handrails, raised flooring systems) in specific hazardous urban areas, as support to traditional strategies (i.e.: early warning systems; evacuation plan communication). © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Software availability Title: FlooPEDS Developers: Gabriele Bernardini, Mirco Zingaretti, Luca Spalazzi, Marco D'Orazio, Enrico Quagliarini, Maurizio Brocchini, Matteo Postacchini Contact Address: Prof. M. D'Orazio, Dipartimento DICEA, Universit a Politecnica delle Marche, via brecce bianche, 60131 Ancona (Italy) E-mail: g.bernardini@univpm.it; m.dorazio@staff.univpm.it; e. quagliarini@univpm.it Software availability: The executable file is only available for the behavioural model (“beta version” available in the journal supplementary materials, by including the case study scenario inputs); for the hydrodynamic model, please contact authors (m.brocchini@univpm.it; m.postacchini@ univpm.it) Sourcecode language: Java Software required: Recommended JRE 1.8.0_20 or later System required: Any personal computer with MS Windows 7 or MS Windows 8 1. Introduction Studies on risk and damage due to a urban flood are mainly based on hazard and vulnerability estimations (Jha et al., 2012; Leskens et al., 2014). The occurrence probability of the flood de- pends on its type and causes (Jha et al., 2012) and it can also include related uncertainties (Bazin et al., 2017). Territorial features are generally accounted for by vulnerability analyses (Jiang et al., 2009). They mainly involve: plano-altimetrical layouts (including mapping activities (Morelli et al., 2012)); land use highlighting economic factors, their sensitiveness to flood effects (Jiang et al., 2009) and ecological impacts (Jha et al., 2012); population den- sities and demographic data (Koks et al., 2015). Studies concerning the estimation of damages (Molinari et al., 2014) and life losses (Jonkman et al., 2009) in different scenarios are also available, as well as GIS-based applications (Qi and Altinakar, 2011). Modelling studies have been devoted to the determination of the flood-inundation extent, especially in urban areas. Such models have to deal with the spatial scale of the urban tissue, which ranges from 0.1 m to 10 m for significant urban details and between 1 m * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: g.bernardini@univpm.it (G. Bernardini), m.postacchini@ univpm.it (M. Postacchini), e.quagliarini@univpm.it (E. Quagliarini), m.brocchini@ univpm.it (M. Brocchini), caterina.cianca@gmail.com (C. Cianca), m.dorazio@staff. univpm.it (M. D'Orazio). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental Modelling & Software journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsoft http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.06.007 1364-8152/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Environmental Modelling & Software 96 (2017) 14e29