Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148153

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Journal of Transport Geography

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo

Inter-city travel behaviour adaptation to extreme weather events

Qing-Chang Lu a,, Junyi Zhang b, Zhong-Ren Peng c,d, ABM Sertajur Rahman e
a
Department of Transportation and Shipping, School of Naval Architecture, Oceanic & Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 800 Dongchuan Rd., Shanghai,
200240, China
b
Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University, 1-5-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8529, Japan
c
Department of Urban and Regional Planning, College of Design, Construction and Planning, University of Florida, PO Box 115706, Gainesville, FL 32611-5706, United States
d
School of Naval Architecture, Oceanic & Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 800 Dongchuan Rd., Shanghai 200240, China
e
Roads and Highways Department, No. 132/4 New Bailey Rd., Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Keywords:
Travel behaviour adaptation
Inter-city travel
Flooding
Coastal
Inland

a b s t r a c t
Increased attention has been paid to travel behaviour in circumstances of extreme weather
conditions that are expected with climate change, and the analyses usually address intra-city travel.
There is lack of assessments on inter-city travel which has less redundancy and is more exposed to
extreme weather threats. In addition, much of the research has been carried out in developed
countries. This paper provides new perspectives by investigating how people adapt their inter-city
travel behaviour to ooding impacts in Bangladesh. With an orthogonal design of three ooding
scenarios, questionnaire data were collected in 14 coastal and inland areas. Results of the statistical
analyses identify the signicant impacts of ooding on peoples inter-city travel and reveal signicant differences in attitudes and responses to ooding and extreme weather in coastal compared
to inland locations. The main factors signicantly affecting travel behaviour choice are road disruption, isolation by ood water, and ood frequency. These factors are felt differently in coastal and
inland locations. The most common responses are cancelling trips or changing destinations. It is
recommended that when making ooding adaptation decisions, it is important to protect road
infrastructure and guarantee accessible routes in coastal areas, while offering more ood adaptation
education to the inland people.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Climate change will pose serious impacts on the transportation
sector, and thus attracting increasing attention from transportation
engineers, planners, and decision makers. Research works focusing
on climate change in transportation have usually addressed in two
aspects, that is, mitigation and adaptation. Compared to mitigation
efforts, adaptation will be a more urgent policy concern, as it
requires adapting the transportation infrastructure and planning
to the expected increasing impacts. As a result, climate change
adaptation receives much attention in transportation network
analysis (Taylor et al., 2006; Seyedshohadaie et al., 2010; Lu and
Peng, 2011), and a focus on adaptation decision making is also
common (Scott et al., 2006; Sullivan et al., 2010; Lu et al., 2012;
Lu and Peng, 2014). However, in these approaches there is less
emphasis on possible changes in travel behaviour.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 21 34206674.
E-mail addresses: qclu@sjtu.edu.cn (Q.-C. Lu), zjy@hiroshima-u.ac.jp (J. Zhang),
zpeng@u.edu (Z.-R. Peng), sertajrahman@gmail.com (A.S. Rahman).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2014.08.016
0966-6923/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

It is important to understand this dimension as transportation

network performance is largely dependent on how travelers
respond to trafc conditions (Khattak and Palma, 1997). Neglecting
that dimension might lead to inaccurate results in the network
performance analysis such as the research of Sohn (2006),
Jenelius (2009), and Taylor and Susilawati (2012) or limit the efcient calculation techniques for the network scans (Chen et al.,
2012; Jenelius and Mattsson, 2012). This is because trips will be
delayed, rerouted, or cancelled when the transportation system is
interrupted by intense rainfall or extreme events such as hurricanes, which further inuences network performance. Although
recent studies (Chen et al., 2012; Watling and Balijepalli, 2012)
have addressed travel demand uncertainty and demand growth
issues, peoples behaviour responses are different when confronting normal rush hour congestion compared to adverse weather
conditions and disastrous transportation infrastructure failure.
Thus, it is of great importance to better understand peoples travel
behaviour change choices and include these changes in transportation network performance analysis and adaptation decision
making.

Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148153

Recently, peoples travel behaviour under climate change has

attracted research attention on two aspects. Some studies explored
the inuence of peoples travel behaviour on greenhouse gas emission in the transportation sector (Line et al., 2010, 2012; Avineri,
2012; Aamaas et al., 2013) emphasising the importance of climate
change mitigation actions, while other efforts address behavioural
adaptation to climate change (Suarez et al., 2005; Cools et al.,
2010; Cools and Creemers, 2013; Koetse and Rietveld, 2009;
Bcker et al., 2013a; Saneinejad et al., 2012; Ahmed et al., 2013).
The analysis of travel behaviour under extreme weather is another
focus of attention. Khattak and Palma (1997) report that half of the
automobile travelers changed their travel patterns under adverse
weather in Brussels, Belgium, and there was a stronger inuence
of bad weather at the departure time than in route and mode
changes. Heavy rain reduced trafc volume in Melbourne by 2
3% (Keay and Simmonds, 2005), and related results were also found
by Van Berkum et al. (2006). Weather information also has a significant effect on the behavioural change of travelers in Flanders
(Cools and Creemers, 2013), and the observed changes depend on
trip purpose (Cools et al., 2010). Research in Toronto, Canada conrms the signicant impact of weather on different travel modes
and showed walk and bike modes are more negatively affected
for younger travelers (Saneinejad et al., 2012). Ahmed et al.
(2013) nd that weather condition is a paramount factor in cycling
decisions in Victoria, Australia. Evidence is also found for the relevance between extreme weather events and mode choice and distance travelled in the Dutch metropolitan Randstad region, and the
switches between open-air modes such as cycling and walking to
non-open-air modes such as private car and transit are especially
affected (Bcker et al., 2013a). This review conrms that there is
almost no doubt that peoples travel behaviour is affected by
weather conditions and behavioural changes are made to adapt
to these impacts.
Research has shown that because of the diversities of climate
change regimes and differences in culture/habituation these travel
behaviour responses are likely to be different in different countries
(Khattak and Palma, 1997; Bcker et al., 2013a; Cools and
Creemers, 2013). As shown above, contributions exploring peoples
travel behaviour adaptation to weather conditions are mainly
made in developed countries. However as a global threat, the
extreme weather events associated with climate change pose the
same or even higher risk in developing countries. This is because
a larger share of population in developing countries lives in ood
zones, and the adaptation capacity of those countries may be much
lower than developed countries because of poor transportation
planning and infrastructure limitations. Situations would be even
worse in poor, more exposed, and densely populated developing
countries such as Bangladesh. Thus, understanding peoples travel
behavioural responses in developing countries might be as, or even
more, important than those in developed countries. It is important
to acknowledge that peoples travel responses will be different for
different weather events, but that also even in the same country.
People may respond to weather events such as intense storm
surges, hurricanes, and longer term sea-level rise differently in
coastal areas and inland regions. In addition, almost all the
research reviewed addresses the behavioural adaptations of
intra-city travel with emphasis on the use of private car, bus, bike,
and walk modes (Aultman-Hall et al., 2009; Elias et al., 2013). The
responses in inter-city travel receive less attention. This is an
important distinction as there are obvious differences between
inter-city and intra-city travel in terms of travel distance, travel
purpose, and potential alternative travel routes (that is, fewer
redundant travel routes than for intra-city travel), while the
inter-city transportation infrastructure may be more exposed to
extreme weather events due to fewer buildings and shelters

149

(Bcker et al., 2013b). These differences mean that the travel

behaviour in the inter-city context calls for special attention.
To address the above research gaps, this paper aims to investigate how people adapt their inter-city travel behaviour to ooding
in Bangladesh. Travel behaviour responses to different scenarios of
ood frequency, intensity, and road disruptions are explored in
coastal and inland Bangladesh separately. The remainder of this
paper starts with a description of the research design, including
data collection and methodology. Then results are presented showing peoples travel behavioural responses. Subsequently, a discussion of the results is provided. The nal section concludes this
study.

2. Research design
2.1. Data
As a result of climate change, intense hurricane and storm
surge, heavy precipitation, and rising sea levels can all result in
ooding of the transportation sector with increased frequency
and intensity. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries
in the world for ood risk due to its geographical location and setting. As a country with high population density, 10% of the Bengalese live along the coastal areas (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics,
2005). The ood plains of its three large rivers cover about 80%
of the countrys land with three-quarters of its population living
in the frequent ood zone (Alam et al., 2002), and 90% of the population in Bangladesh is 1 m below the global mean sea level and
one-third is under tidal inuence (Karim and Mimura, 2008). On
average, 6000 people die from ooding and storms each year
(Schiermeier, 2014). In these conditions it is not surprising that
the Bangladesh transportation infrastructure and peoples travel
experience great challenges from ooding impacts.
In this regard, we conducted a questionnaire survey that
required respondents to consider ooding scenarios and report
their travel adaptations. The survey began with two general questions: To what extent do you think the extreme weather events
negatively affect your quality of life, including daily travel?; then
Do you think the weather-related disasters are becoming more
frequent and serious in recent years?. Personal information such
as age, income, education degree, occupation, and so on was also
collected in the survey. Each respondent was then asked to report
on his or her latest three inter-city travel experiences, including
destination, travel purpose, and travel modes. Respondents then
had to consider the ooding scenarios based on knowledge of the
frequency and intensity of ooding, after consulting local experts
and residents. These were created from an orthogonal experiment
with ve factors, which are ood frequency (once every 3 years,
once every 2 years, and once every year), ood intensity (ood
level reaches knees, reaches waist, and reaches chest and above),
permanent/frequent inundation (Yes or No), the house is isolated
by water (Yes or No), and roads to destination cities are completely
destroyed (Yes or No). Four cards, with four scenarios in each card,
were created, so that each respondent had to give answers to four
ooding scenarios for his or her reported latest inter-city travel
experience. The four kinds of cards were distributed equally among
the sample areas in the survey. The respondents could select ve
travel changes they would make in response to the weather events.
These were: (1) time of day, (2) destination, (3) travel modes/
routes, (4) cancellation, and (5) travel as usual. The questionnaire
sheets were distributed in 9 coastal areas and 5 inland areas in
the period January to March of 2013. As the Bangladesh coastal
area is more exposed and vulnerable to ooding, the coastal area
received a higher sample share. In total 998 responses were

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Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148153

we can only observe whether the travel choice of a traveler is 0 or

1 in the MNL model. As a result, in the MNL analysis, the observed
dummy variable of travel behaviour choice is denoted as

Table 1
Occupations and sample shares in the survey.
Occupations

Coastal sample share

(%)

Inland sample share

(%)

Famer/sherman
Labourers
Boatman
Rickshaw driver
Businessman
Government staff/
politicians
Teacher/student
Private job
Others

34.7
12.8
6.7
2.2
15.2
6.6

33.0
11.4
1.2
6.2
14.6
9.4

8.6
5.9
7.3

8.4
9.4
6.4

8
0;
>
>
>
>
< 1;
yi .
>
..
>
>
>
:
4;

collected consisting of 596 samples from the coastal areas and 402
samples from the inland areas. More than 90% of the respondents
are aged from 20 to 60 years, and more than half belong to the
2040 age group. Male respondents are the main inter-city travelers in Bangladesh, as a result male respondents are more numerous
than female respondents. The occupations of the respondents vary
from farmer to businessman and government staff, and the details
are shown in Table 1. As shown in the table, farmer and sherman
account for a large percent of the countrys population and have
the highest share in the samples. In a second group are businessman, labourers, government staff, and so on who would make
more frequent inter-city travel. In order to ensure the quality of
the survey, a pilot survey was conducted and surveyors were asked
to explain the ooding scenarios and provide responses when the
respondent had difculties in reading, writing, and understanding
the questions.
2.2. Methodology
Based on the above survey data, peoples travel behaviour under
ooding is analysed separately for the coastal and inland areas to
establish any differences in the two regions. Pearsons Chi-square
tests for independence are applied to the data in coastal and inland
areas. In this study, the Chi-square is dened as

v2

k
X
Q ci  Eci 2 =Eci Q li  Eli 2 =Eli

i1

where Qci is the observed frequency under the choice of answer i in

coastal areas; Qli is the observed frequency under the choice of
answer i in inland areas; Eci and Eli denote the expected frequency
of answer i of coastal and inland people respectively, which are calculated as

Eci Nc Ni =Nc Nl ;
Eli Nl Ni =Nc Nl

and

2
3

where Ni is the total number of people that choose answer i for both
coastal and inland samples, Nc is the total number of coastal samples; Nl is the total number of inland samples.
In order to investigate peoples travel behaviour change under
different ooding scenarios, a multinomial logistic (MNL) model
is employed. In the model, the utility of traveler i under a ood scenario, yi, is assumed to be a latent variable, and yi is constructed
as follows

yi b0

N
X

bj xij li

if yi1 > yi2 ; yi3 ; yi4 ; yi5

if yi2 > yi1 ; yi3 ; yi4 ; yi5
..
.

Otherwise

where yi denotes no travel behaviour change (take value 0), cancel the travel (take value 1), change travel mode/route (take value
2), change destination (take value 3), or change travel time of
day (take value 4), and yi1 , yi2 , yi3 , yi4 , yi5 are the utility of traveler
i when there is no behavioural change, cancel the travel, change travel mode/route, change destination, and change travel time of day,
respectively.
3. Results
3.1. Comparison of peoples responses in the coastal and inland areas
The rst step established the broad understanding of the threat
of ooding and other weather events, by seeking answers to two
questions: (1) To what extent do you think the disasters negatively affect your quality of life, including daily travel? and (2)
Do you think the climate change disasters are becoming more frequent and serious in recent years?. Results are shown in Figs. 1
and 2. It is shown that 80% of coastal respondents are seriously
affected by the weather events. This is different from answers of
the inland respondents where only half reported being seriously
affected and more than 20% reported their quality of life is not
affected at all. Respondents who believe these events completely
overwhelm their quality of life are three times more numerous
in the coastal areas than in inland areas. In Fig. 2, more than 60%
people think that the disasters are becoming more frequent and
serious in both areas, and the differences between the coast and
the inland are not as marked, although it is the inland respondents
who think the situation has become worse in recent years. That
may reect the fact that the coastal respondents have had much
more experience with serious ood events over a long time; that
has been a recent experience for inland respondents which points
to the steady deterioration in weather conditions associated with
climate change.
Fig. 3 shows the results of peoples travel behaviour responses
given the different ooding scenarios of the survey. Among all
the travel choices available to them, the majority respond No
change in both coastal and inland areas. A higher share of coastal
respondents made this choice indicating perhaps that their greater
experience of these events makes them more adaptive. The choices
of Change of mode/route and Change time of day are a little
higher in the inland area, perhaps as those respondents may have
more options when facing ood conditions. The Trip cancel decision has a similar share in both coastal and inland areas. In fact the
cancellation decision attracts around the same number of
responses as the no change decision and together these two
choices account for 50% of responses. Hence the impact of extreme
weather events is likely to be difcult to predict as these two
choices are so different in outcome. The determining factor may
be the severity of the weather event. This is explored below.

j1

where Xij are the explanatory variables such as ood frequency,

ood intensity, and road conditions under ooding. li is assumed
to follow the Gumble distribution across the observations. As mentioned above, yi is a latent variable and could not be observed and

3.2. Chi-square analysis

Following Eqs. (1)(3), the Chi-square test is applied to the questionnaire data to conrm the signicance of differences in
responses to ooding impacts between coastal and inland people.

Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148153

Fig. 1. Descriptive of ood impacts on peoples quality of life.

Fig. 2. Descriptive of peoples attitude towards climate change.

Fig. 3. Discriptive of peoples travel choice under ooding as a result of climate

change.

Besides answers to the two questions noted above, peoples travel

responses to different ooding scenarios are included in the test.
Analysis results are shown in Table 2. The Chi-square analysis of
the rst question shows an insignicant value, showing respondents from coastal and inland areas have very similar views on
the effect of severe weather events on quality of life. The Chi-square
tests are signicant at the 5% level for the second and last questions,
indicating statistical difference between coastal and inland respondents in terms of travel changes in response to ooding. Cramers V
values of the responses to these questions are given in Table 2. Most
of the Cramers V values are less than 0.1 reecting a weak association between answers from coastal and inland people. All the above
results show it is important to look into the response and choice
behaviour of coastal and inland people separately.

3.3. Logistic regression analysis

Logistic regression analysis is used to explore behaviour adaptation to ooding, and coastal and inland data are processed sepa-

151

rately in the MNL model. The choices faced by respondents

(involving time of day, destination, change of travel modes/routes,
and trip cancellation) are used as the dependent variable, and factors describing different ooding scenarios (ood frequency, ood
intensity (three level variables), isolation, road damage, inundation
(two level variables: Yes or No)) are the explanatory variables. The
analysis also includes responses on quality of life effects, which is
included as a two level variable (Yes or No). Socio-economic factors
such as age, income, occupation, and education are controlled in
the MNL analysis.
Table 3 shows the MNL estimation results of the socio-economic
factors and revealed preference factors inuencing travel behaviour
change under ooding. Among the variables, income is the most
signicant factor and most coefcients are signicant at 1% level
for both coastal and inland observations. This means that the higher
the income the easier is for a respondent to change their travel
behaviour. Age also proves to be signicant in coastal areas, and
the negative coefcients indicate that young people are more likely
to change travel arrangements. Occupation and education are weak
factors in this analysis. The coefcients on the opinion on quality of
life effects are negative, meaning that respondents who do not
regard ooding as a quality of life problem are unlikely to change
their travel behaviour. The coefcients on the opinion concerning
a belief that climate change has become more serious is not signicant for most of the travel behaviour changes, indicating that
day to day inuences rather than the long term trends are the biggest concern. In general, more signicant factors are found in the
coastal than the inland sample. As noted earlier this might be
because that coastal people have experienced more ooding events
and know more about ood risk.
The MNL model estimation results of the ood related factors in
coastal and inland areas are shown in Table 4. It can be seen that
ood frequency, isolated by water, and road disruption are significant factors for almost all the behaviour choices in both locations.
Flood intensity and permanent/frequent inundation factors are
only signicant for travel choices such as destination change and
mode/route change. With the increase of ood frequency, respondents tend to change their travel behaviour and most probably
destinations are changed or trips are cancelled as these two factors
receive the highest coefcient values. With permanent/frequent
inundation respondents are more likely to change their destinations (based on the negative estimations of its coefcients).
There are some different responses between coastal and inland
locations. Inland ood intensity leads to changing mode/route,
while facing isolation by water and road disruption the respondents tend to cancel trips. In contrast, coastal respondents are
likely to change destinations or mode/route in high ood intensity,
when isolated by water and when facing road damage. This shows
that inland people who live in relatively poor areas are more conservative, that is, cancelling their trips rather than changing destinations when faced with a weather hazard. Coastal respondents
are more sensitive to road disruption than other factors, while
inland respondents care more about ood frequency as the absolute values of coefcients for ood frequency factor are bigger in
inland. But in general the values identied in the analyses are
higher in coastal than in inland areas.

4. Discussion
The above results of both the Chi-square test and logistic
regression analysis identify the signicant impacts of ood on
inter-city travel in Bangladesh. All the coastal respondents and
more than 90% of the total respondents acknowledge that their
quality of life and transportation are negatively affected by climate
change and that these impacts are getting worse, especially in the

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Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148153

Table 2
Chi-square tests of the difference of answers from coastal and inland people.
Question

DF

Pearsons Chi2

Cramers V

Sig.

To what extent you think that the disasters negatively affected your quality of life?
Do you think the disasters are becoming more frequent and serious in recent years in your area?
Whether or not change travel behaviour under different ooding scenarios?
Travel behaviour responses under different ooding scenarios

9
4
1
16

10.02
19.82
3.31
27.66

0.09
0.16
0.05
0.07

0.348
0.001
0.070
0.035

DF = Degree of freedom.
Sig. = Signicance level.
Number of coastal observations = 2384.
Number of inland observations = 1427.

Table 3
Estimation of socio-economic factors controlled in the MNL models.
Flooding impacts on travel behaviour choices (reference = No change)
Trip cancel

Age
Income
Education
Occupation
Quality of life affected
Believe climate change more serious or not
*
**
***

Change mode/route

Change destination

Change time of day

Coastal

Inland

Coastal

Inland

Coastal

Inland

Coastal

Inland

0.060
0.110**
0.056
0.026*
0.305***
0.218***

0.040
0.094*
0.005
0.077***
0.365***
0.177

0.138*
0.221***
0.088**
0.022
0.210**
0.089

0.178*
0.285***
0.068
0.011
0.117
0.055

0.145*
0.150***
0.005
0.020
0.189*
0.011

0.142
0.277***
0.026
0.004
0.051
0.036

0.224***
0.155***
0.030
0.038**
0.037
0.133*

0.056
0.183***
0.002
0.002
0.085
0.240*

Statistical signicance at 10% level.

Statistical signicance at 5% level.
Statistical signicance at 1% level.

Table 4
Flooding parameter estimation in the MNL models.
Flooding impacts on travel behaviour choices (reference = No change)
Trip cancel
Coastal

Inland

Flood frequency
0.572***
1.102***
Flood intensity
0.001
0.050
Permanent/frequent inundation
0.237**
0.202
Isolated by water
0.424***
1.141***
Road disruption
1.028***
0.703***
Constant
0.928***
0.245
2 Log Likelihood 6663 (Coastal); 4107 (Inland)
Number of observations 2384(Coastal); 1427 (Inland)
*
**
***

Change mode/route

Change destination

Change time of day

Coastal

Inland

Coastal

Inland

Coastal

Inland

0.329***
0.013
0.091
0.074***
1.874***
2.509***

0.649***
0.298***
0.154
0.589***
0.447***
0.180

0.719***
0.206**
0.917***
0.802***
1.340***
1.683***

1.098***
0.057
0.455**
0.622***
0.063
3.333***

0.287***
0.121
0.005
0.712***
0.584***
0.481

0.921***
0.024
0.011
0.559***
0.289*
2.439***

Statistical signicance at 10% level.

Statistical signicance at 5% level.
Statistical signicance at 1% level.

coastal area. Attitudes and responses toward ooding are signicantly different between coastal area and inland region and the
factors that lead to change in inter-city travel behaviour are different in the two areas. These outcomes contrast to results found in
other parts of the world. For example, 60% of the respondents in
this research report changing their travel behaviour under pressure
of ooding events, compared to the 50% of respondents found in
research on (less intensive) weather events in Belgium (Khattak
and Palma, 1997), and ten times more than that reported in
research in Australia (Keay and Simmonds, 2005). These underscore the differences in outcomes in different countries at different
levels of development.
However, results show many respondents would rather endure
the impacts than change routes, modes, or destinations (or alternatively just cancel their trip). A possible interpretation is that poor
road infrastructure and few alternative mode choices reduce the
options available. That is conrmed by the fact that road disruption
is an especially important inuence upon travel choices. In addition, as people in Bangladesh have considerable experience in dealing with the impact of oods they have acquired basic knowledge

and practices which enables them to adapt to the situation. In fact

in this survey, the results showed that many respondents could
hardly recall details of ood intensity and travel routes and modes
of previous travel in a time of recent ood.
5. Conclusions
This work has explored changes in peoples inter-city travel
behaviour from coastal and inland areas in response to different
ooding factors and scenarios in Bangladesh. The results conrm
that the majority of people are affected by ooding and agree that
impacts are becoming more serious under the changing climate.
However, the responses and attitudes are different between coastal
and inland people, and this difference proved to be statistically signicant. The travel decisions of coastal people are affected mainly
by indicators of ooding levels, while the decisions of inland people seem to depend more on ood frequency and the threat of isolation. In contrast to intra-city travel, the fewer alternative routes
and transportation modes of inter-city transportation means many
decisions involve cancelling trips.

Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148153

Results of this work add to the knowledge of adaptation to

ooding and climate change in a developing and seriously affected
country. This adaptation should be addressed in transportation
network analysis and evaluation with respect to the impacts
expected under climate change. Recognising the behavioural differences in locations can ensure accuracy in transportation modeling and in impact assessment, as well as studies of adaptive
capacity evaluation and adaptation decision making processes.
So, for example, it will be important to protect road infrastructure
and guarantee accessible routes when making climate change and
ooding adaptation recommendations, as these aspects are critical
in coastal travel decisions. Furthermore more, education on coping
with ooding frequency and adaptation measures need to be delivered to the inland people. Results and conclusions of this paper
could also serve as a reference when making comparative analysis
of the travel behaviour adaptation between different nations, climate regimes, and ooding conditions. There may be some lessons
here for research on intra-city travel. Those approaches could
include attention to factors such as a travelers personal and social
attributes, trip purpose, thus acknowledging that intra-city travel
behaviour may also depend signicantly on other non-ood factors. These approaches could extend to include travel mode choice,
such as bicycling, driving, and taking buses under different climate
change scenarios.
Acknowledgments
This research is nancially supported by Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science & Technology (MEXT) in Japan under the
Special Coordination Funds for Promotion of Science and Technology at Hiroshima University. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
(2013M540367) and the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (51408356). We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the paper.
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