Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148–153

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

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 a b s t r a c t

Keywords: Increased attention has been paid to travel behaviour in circumstances of extreme weather
Travel behaviour adaptation conditions that are expected with climate change, and the analyses usually address intra-city travel.
Inter-city travel There is lack of assessments on inter-city travel which has less redundancy and is more exposed to
Flooding extreme weather threats. In addition, much of the research has been carried out in developed
Coastal
countries. This paper provides new perspectives by investigating how people adapt their inter-city
Inland
travel behaviour to flooding impacts in Bangladesh. With an orthogonal design of three flooding
scenarios, questionnaire data were collected in 14 coastal and inland areas. Results of the statistical
analyses identify the significant impacts of flooding on people’s inter-city travel and reveal signifi-
cant differences in attitudes and responses to flooding and extreme weather in coastal compared
to inland locations. The main factors significantly affecting travel behaviour choice are road disrup-
tion, isolation by flood water, and flood 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 flooding adaptation decisions, it is important to protect road
infrastructure and guarantee accessible routes in coastal areas, while offering more flood adaptation
education to the inland people.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction It is important to understand this dimension as transportation

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@ufl.edu (Z.-R. Peng), sertajrahman@gmail.com (A.S. Rahman).
network performance is largely dependent on how travelers
respond to traffic 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 effi-
cient 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 hurri-
canes, which further influences network performance. Although
recent studies (Chen et al., 2012; Watling and Balijepalli, 2012)
have addressed travel demand uncertainty and demand growth
issues, people’s behaviour responses are different when confront-
ing normal rush hour congestion compared to adverse weather
conditions and disastrous transportation infrastructure failure.
Thus, it is of great importance to better understand people’s travel
behaviour change choices and include these changes in transporta-
tion network performance analysis and adaptation decision
making.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2014.08.016
0966-6923/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148–153
Recently, people’s travel behaviour under climate change has
attracted research attention on two aspects. Some studies explored
the influence of people’s travel behaviour on greenhouse gas emis-
sion 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;
Böcker 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 influence
of bad weather at the departure time than in route and mode
changes. Heavy rain reduced traffic 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 signif-
icant 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 con-
firms the significant 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) find that weather condition is a paramount factor in cycling
decisions in Victoria, Australia. Evidence is also found for the rele-
vance between extreme weather events and mode choice and dis-
tance 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 (Böcker et al., 2013a). This review confirms that there is
almost no doubt that people’s 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; Böcker et al., 2013a; Cools and
Creemers, 2013). As shown above, contributions exploring people’s
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 flood
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 people’s travel
behavioural responses in developing countries might be as, or even
more, important than those in developed countries. It is important
to acknowledge that people’s 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
(Böcker 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 investi-
gate how people adapt their inter-city travel behaviour to flooding
in Bangladesh. Travel behaviour responses to different scenarios of
flood 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 show-
ing people’s travel behavioural responses. Subsequently, a discus-
sion of the results is provided. The final 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
flooding of the transportation sector with increased frequency
and intensity. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries
in the world for flood risk due to its geographical location and set-
ting. As a country with high population density, 10% of the Bengal-
ese live along the coastal areas (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics,
2005). The flood plains of its three large rivers cover about 80%
of the country’s land with three-quarters of its population living
in the frequent flood zone (Alam et al., 2002), and 90% of the pop-
ulation in Bangladesh is 1 m below the global mean sea level and
one-third is under tidal influence (Karim and Mimura, 2008). On
average, 6000 people die from flooding and storms each year
(Schiermeier, 2014). In these conditions it is not surprising that
the Bangladesh transportation infrastructure and people’s travel
experience great challenges from flooding impacts.
In this regard, we conducted a questionnaire survey that
required respondents to consider flooding scenarios and report
their travel adaptations. The survey began with two general ques-
tions: ‘‘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 flooding scenarios based on knowledge of the
frequency and intensity of flooding, after consulting local experts
and residents. These were created from an orthogonal experiment
with five factors, which are flood frequency (once every 3 years,
once every 2 years, and once every year), flood intensity (flood
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
flooding 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 five
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 flooding, the coastal area
received a higher sample share. In total 998 responses were
150 Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148–153

Table 1 we can only observe whether the travel choice of a traveler is ‘‘0’’ or
Occupations and sample shares in the survey. ‘‘1’’ in the MNL model. As a result, in the MNL analysis, the observed
Occupations Coastal sample share Inland sample share dummy variable of travel behaviour choice is denoted as
(%) (%) 8
> 0; if yi1 > yi2 ; yi3 ; yi4 ; yi5
Famer/fisherman 34.7 33.0 >
>
>
< 1; if yi2 > yi1 ; yi3 ; yi4 ; yi5
Labourers 12.8 11.4
Boatman 6.7 1.2 yi ¼ . .. ð5Þ
>
> .. .
Rickshaw driver 2.2 6.2 >
>
Businessman 15.2 14.6 :
4; Otherwise
Government staff/ 6.6 9.4
politicians
where yi denotes no travel behaviour change (take value ‘‘0’’), can-
Teacher/student 8.6 8.4
Private job 5.9 9.4 cel the travel (take value ‘‘1’’), change travel mode/route (take value
Others 7.3 6.4 ‘‘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 tra-
collected consisting of 596 samples from the coastal areas and 402
vel mode/route, change destination, and change travel time of day,
samples from the inland areas. More than 90% of the respondents
respectively.
are aged from 20 to 60 years, and more than half belong to the
20–40 age group. Male respondents are the main inter-city travel-
ers in Bangladesh, as a result male respondents are more numerous 3. Results
than female respondents. The occupations of the respondents vary
from farmer to businessman and government staff, and the details 3.1. Comparison of people’s responses in the coastal and inland areas
are shown in Table 1. As shown in the table, farmer and fisherman
account for a large percent of the country’s population and have The first step established the broad understanding of the threat
the highest share in the samples. In a second group are business- of flooding and other weather events, by seeking answers to two
man, labourers, government staff, and so on who would make questions: (1) ‘‘To what extent do you think the disasters nega-
more frequent inter-city travel. In order to ensure the quality of tively affect your quality of life, including daily travel?’’ and (2)
the survey, a pilot survey was conducted and surveyors were asked ‘‘Do you think the climate change disasters are becoming more fre-
to explain the flooding scenarios and provide responses when the quent and serious in recent years?’’. Results are shown in Figs. 1
respondent had difficulties in reading, writing, and understanding and 2. It is shown that 80% of coastal respondents are seriously
the questions. affected by the weather events. This is different from answers of
the inland respondents where only half reported being seriously
2.2. Methodology affected and more than 20% reported their quality of life is not
affected at all. Respondents who believe these events completely
Based on the above survey data, people’s travel behaviour under overwhelm their quality of life are three times more numerous
flooding is analysed separately for the coastal and inland areas to in the coastal areas than in inland areas. In Fig. 2, more than 60%
establish any differences in the two regions. Pearson’s Chi-square people think that the disasters are becoming more frequent and
tests for independence are applied to the data in coastal and inland serious in both areas, and the differences between the coast and
areas. In this study, the Chi-square is defined as the inland are not as marked, although it is the inland respondents
who think the situation has become worse in recent years. That
X
k
v2 ¼ ððQ ci  Eci Þ2 =Eci þ ðQ li  Eli Þ2 =Eli Þ ð1Þ may reflect the fact that the coastal respondents have had much
i¼1 more experience with serious flood events over a long time; that
has been a recent experience for inland respondents which points
where Qci is the observed frequency under the choice of answer i in
to the steady deterioration in weather conditions associated with
coastal areas; Qli is the observed frequency under the choice of
climate change.
answer i in inland areas; Eci and Eli denote the expected frequency
Fig. 3 shows the results of people’s travel behaviour responses
of answer i of coastal and inland people respectively, which are cal-
given the different flooding scenarios of the survey. Among all
culated as
the travel choices available to them, the majority respond ‘‘No
Eci ¼ Nc Ni =ðNc þ Nl Þ; and ð2Þ change’’ in both coastal and inland areas. A higher share of coastal
respondents made this choice indicating perhaps that their greater
Eli ¼ Nl Ni =ðNc þ Nl Þ ð3Þ experience of these events makes them more adaptive. The choices
of ‘‘Change of mode/route’’ and ‘‘Change time of day’’ are a little
where Ni is the total number of people that choose answer i for both
higher in the inland area, perhaps as those respondents may have
coastal and inland samples, Nc is the total number of coastal sam-
more options when facing flood conditions. The ‘‘Trip cancel’’ deci-
ples; Nl is the total number of inland samples.
sion has a similar share in both coastal and inland areas. In fact the
In order to investigate people’s travel behaviour change under
cancellation decision attracts around the same number of
different flooding scenarios, a multinomial logistic (MNL) model
responses as the ‘‘no change’’ decision and together these two
is employed. In the model, the utility of traveler i under a flood sce-
choices account for 50% of responses. Hence the impact of extreme
nario, yi⁄, is assumed to be a latent variable, and yi⁄ is constructed
weather events is likely to be difficult to predict as these two
as follows
choices are so different in outcome. The determining factor may
X
N be the severity of the weather event. This is explored below.
yi ¼ b0 þ bj xij þ li ð4Þ
j¼1
3.2. Chi-square analysis
where Xij are the explanatory variables such as flood frequency,
flood intensity, and road conditions under flooding. li is assumed Following Eqs. (1)–(3), the Chi-square test is applied to the ques-
to follow the Gumble distribution across the observations. As men- tionnaire data to confirm the significance of differences in
tioned above, yi⁄ is a latent variable and could not be observed and responses to flooding impacts between coastal and inland people.
 Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148–153
Fig. 1. Descriptive of flood impacts on people’s quality of life.
Fig. 2. Descriptive of people’s attitude towards climate change.
Fig. 3. Discriptive of people’s travel choice under flooding as a result of climate
change.
Besides answers to the two questions noted above, people’s travel
responses to different flooding scenarios are included in the test.
Analysis results are shown in Table 2. The Chi-square analysis of
the first question shows an insignificant value, showing respon-
dents 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 significant at the 5% level for the second and last questions,
indicating statistical difference between coastal and inland respon-
dents in terms of travel changes in response to flooding. Cramer’s V
values of the responses to these questions are given in Table 2. Most
of the Cramer’s V values are less than 0.1 reflecting a weak associa-
tion 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 adapta-
tion to flooding, 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 fac-
tors describing different flooding scenarios (flood frequency, flood
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 influencing travel behaviour
change under flooding. Among the variables, income is the most
significant factor and most coefficients are significant 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 significant in coastal areas, and
the negative coefficients indicate that young people are more likely
to change travel arrangements. Occupation and education are weak
factors in this analysis. The coefficients on the opinion on quality of
life effects are negative, meaning that respondents who do not
regard flooding as a quality of life problem are unlikely to change
their travel behaviour. The coefficients on the opinion concerning
a belief that ‘‘climate change has become more serious’’ is not sig-
nificant for most of the travel behaviour changes, indicating that
day to day influences rather than the long term trends are the big-
gest concern. In general, more significant factors are found in the
coastal than the inland sample. As noted earlier this might be
because that coastal people have experienced more flooding events
and know more about flood risk.
The MNL model estimation results of the flood related factors in
coastal and inland areas are shown in Table 4. It can be seen that
flood frequency, isolated by water, and road disruption are signif-
icant factors for almost all the behaviour choices in both locations.
Flood intensity and permanent/frequent inundation factors are
only significant for travel choices such as destination change and
mode/route change. With the increase of flood frequency, respon-
dents tend to change their travel behaviour and most probably
destinations are changed or trips are cancelled as these two factors
receive the highest coefficient values. With permanent/frequent
inundation respondents are more likely to change their destina-
tions (based on the negative estimations of its coefficients).
There are some different responses between coastal and inland
locations. Inland flood intensity leads to changing mode/route,
while facing isolation by water and road disruption the respon-
dents tend to cancel trips. In contrast, coastal respondents are
likely to change destinations or mode/route in high flood intensity,
when isolated by water and when facing road damage. This shows
that inland people who live in relatively poor areas are more con-
servative, that is, cancelling their trips rather than changing desti-
nations when faced with a weather hazard. Coastal respondents
are more sensitive to road disruption than other factors, while
inland respondents care more about flood frequency as the abso-
lute values of coefficients for flood frequency factor are bigger in
inland. But in general the values identified 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 significant impacts of flood 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
152 Q.-C. Lu et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 41 (2014) 148–153

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

Question DF Pearson’s Chi2 Cramer’s V Sig.

To what extent you think that the disasters negatively affected your quality of life? 9 10.02 0.09 0.348
Do you think the disasters are becoming more frequent and serious in recent years in your area? 4 19.82 0.16 0.001
Whether or not change travel behaviour under different flooding scenarios? 1 3.31 0.05 0.070
Travel behaviour responses under different flooding scenarios 16 27.66 0.07 0.035

DF = Degree of freedom.
Sig. = Significance 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 Change mode/route Change destination Change time of day
Coastal Inland Coastal Inland Coastal Inland Coastal Inland
Age 0.060 0.040 0.138* 0.178* 0.145* 0.142 0.224*** 0.056
Income 0.110** 0.094* 0.221*** 0.285*** 0.150*** 0.277*** 0.155*** 0.183***
Education 0.056 0.005 0.088** 0.068 0.005 0.026 0.030 0.002
Occupation 0.026* 0.077*** 0.022 0.011 0.020 0.004 0.038** 0.002
Quality of life affected 0.305*** 0.365*** 0.210** 0.117 0.189* 0.051 0.037 0.085
Believe climate change more serious or not 0.218*** 0.177 0.089 0.055 0.011 0.036 0.133* 0.240*
*
Statistical significance at 10% level.
**
Statistical significance at 5% level.
***
Statistical significance at 1% level.

Table 4
Flooding parameter estimation in the MNL models.

Flooding impacts on travel behaviour choices (reference = No change)

Trip cancel Change mode/route Change destination Change time of day
Coastal Inland Coastal Inland Coastal Inland Coastal Inland
Flood frequency 0.572*** 1.102*** 0.329*** 0.649*** 0.719*** 1.098*** 0.287*** 0.921***
Flood intensity 0.001 0.050 0.013 0.298*** 0.206** 0.057 0.121 0.024
Permanent/frequent inundation 0.237** 0.202 0.091 0.154 0.917*** 0.455** 0.005 0.011
Isolated by water 0.424*** 1.141*** 0.074*** 0.589*** 0.802*** 0.622*** 0.712*** 0.559***
Road disruption 1.028*** 0.703*** 1.874*** 0.447*** 1.340*** 0.063 0.584*** 0.289*
Constant 0.928*** 0.245 2.509*** 0.180 1.683*** 3.333*** 0.481 2.439***
2 Log Likelihood 6663 (Coastal); 4107 (Inland)
Number of observations 2384(Coastal); 1427 (Inland)
*
Statistical significance at 10% level.
**
Statistical significance at 5% level.
***
Statistical significance at 1% level.

coastal area. Attitudes and responses toward flooding are signifi-
cantly different between coastal area and inland region and the
factors that lead to change in inter-city travel behaviour are differ-
ent 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 flooding 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 under-
score 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 alterna-
tively just cancel their trip). A possible interpretation is that poor
road infrastructure and few alternative mode choices reduce the
options available. That is confirmed by the fact that road disruption
is an especially important influence upon travel choices. In addi-
tion, as people in Bangladesh have considerable experience in deal-
ing with the impact of floods 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 flood intensity and travel routes and modes
of previous travel in a time of recent flood.
5. Conclusions
This work has explored changes in people’s inter-city travel
behaviour from coastal and inland areas in response to different
flooding factors and scenarios in Bangladesh. The results confirm
that the majority of people are affected by flooding 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 sig-
nificant. The travel decisions of coastal people are affected mainly
by indicators of flooding levels, while the decisions of inland peo-
ple seem to depend more on flood frequency and the threat of iso-
lation. 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) 148–153
Results of this work add to the knowledge of adaptation to
flooding 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 dif-
ferences in locations can ensure accuracy in transportation model-
ing 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
flooding adaptation recommendations, as these aspects are critical
in coastal travel decisions. Furthermore more, education on coping
with flooding frequency and adaptation measures need to be deliv-
ered 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, cli-
mate regimes, and flooding conditions. There may be some lessons
here for research on intra-city travel. Those approaches could
include attention to factors such as a traveler’s personal and social
attributes, trip purpose, thus acknowledging that intra-city travel
behaviour may also depend significantly on other non-flood fac-
tors. 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 financially supported by Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science & Technology (MEXT) in Japan under the
Special Coordination Funds for Promotion of Science and Technol-
ogy at Hiroshima University. The authors would like to acknowl-
edge 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 anony-
mous reviewers for their insightful comments on the paper.
References
Aamaas, B., Borken-Kleefeld, J., Peters, G.P., 2013. The climate impact of travel
behavior: a German case study with illustrative mitigation options. Environ. Sci.
Technol. 33, 273–282.
Ahmed, F., Rose, G., Jakob, C., 2013. Examining the impact of changes in weather on
commuter cyclist’s travel behavior. In: On the 92nd Transportation Research
Board Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., 2013.
Alam, M.J.B., Hoque, A.M., Hoque, Md. M., 2002. Assessment of economic loss
caused by flood damaged transportation network in engineering concerns of
floods a 1998 perspective. Directorate of Advisory, Extension and Research
Services, 2002, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Aultman-Hall, L., Lane, D., Lambert, R.R., 2009. Assessing the impact of weather and
season on pedestrian traffic volumes. Transp. Res. Rec. 2140, 35–43.
Avineri, E., 2012. On the use and potential of behavioural economics from the
perspective of transport and climate change. J. Transp. Geogr. 24, 512–521.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2005. Statistical Yearbook of Bangladesh. Dhaka,
Bangladesh.
Böcker, L., Prillwitz, J., Dijst, M., 2013a. Climate change impacts on mode choice and
traveled distances: a comparison of present with 2050 weather conditions for
the Randstad Holland. J. Transp. Geogr. 28, 176–185.
153
Böcker, L., Dijst, M., Prillwitz, J., 2013b. Impact of everyday weather on individual
daily travel behaviours in perspective: a literature review. Trans. Rev. 33 (1),
71–91.
Chen, B.Y., Lam, W.H.K., Sumalee, A., Li, Q., Li, Z.-C., 2012. Vulnerability analysis for
large-scale and congested road networks with demand uncertainty. Transp. Res.
Part A 46, 501–516.
Cools, M., Creemers, L., 2013. The dual role of weather forecasts on changes in
activity-travel behavior. J. Transp. Geogr. 28, 167–175.
Cools, M., Moons, E., Creemers, L., Wets, G., 2010. Changes in travel behavior
response to weather conditions. Transp. Res. Rec. 2157, 22–28.
Elias, W., Albert, G., Shiftan, Y., 2013. Travel behavior in the face of surface
transportation terror attacks. Transp. Policy 28, 114–122.
Jenelius, E., 2009. Network structure and travel patterns: explaining the
geographical disparities of road network vulnerability. J. Transp. Geogr. 17,
234–244.
Jenelius, E., Mattsson, L.-G., 2012. Road network vulnerability analysis of area-
covering disruptions: a grid-based approach with case study. Transp. Res. Part A
46, 746–760.
Karim, M.F., Mimura, N., 2008. Impacts of climate change and sea-level rise on
cyclonic storm surge floods in Bangladesh. Glob. Environ. Change 18, 490–500.
Keay, K., Simmonds, I., 2005. The association of rainfall and other weather variables
with road traffic volume in Melbourne, Australia. Accid. Anal. Prev. 37, 109–124.
Khattak, A., Palma, A., 1997. The impact of adverse weather conditions on the
propensity to change travel decisions: a survey of brussels commuters. Transp.
Res. Part A 31 (3), 181–203.
Koetse, M.J., Rietveld, P., 2009. The impact of climate change and weather on
transport: an overview of empirical findings. Transp. Res. Part D 14, 205–221.
Line, T., Chatterjee, K., Lyons, G., 2010. The travel behaviour intentions of young
people in the context of climate change. J. Transp. Geogr. 18, 238–246.
Line, T., Chatterjee, K., Lyons, G., 2012. Applying behavioural theories to studying
the influence of climate change on young people’s future travel intentions.
Transp. Res. Part D 17, 270–276.
Lu, Q.-C., Peng, Z.-R., 2011. Vulnerability analysis of transportation network under
scenarios of sea level rise. Transp. Res. Rec. 2263, 174–181.
Lu, Q.-C., Peng, Z.-R., 2014. Economic analyses of sea-level rise adaptation strategies
for decision making: a case study of Hillsborough County, Florida. In: On the
93rdTransportation Research Board Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., 2014.
Lu, Q.-C., Peng, Z.-R., Du, R., 2012. Economic analysis of sea-level rise impacts and
adaptation strategies in transportation. Transp. Res. Rec. 2273, 54–61.
Saneinejad, S., Roorda, M.J., Kennedy, C., 2012. Modeling the impact of weather
conditions on active transportation travel behavior. Transp. Res. Part D 17, 129–
137.
Schiermeier, Q., 2014. Holding back the tide. Nature 508, 164–166.
Scott, D.M., Novak, D.C., Aultman-Hall, L., Guo, F., 2006. Network robustness index:
a new method for identifying critical links and evaluating the performance of
transportation networks. J. Transp. Geogr. 14, 215–227.
Seyedshohadaie, S.R., Damnjanovic, I., Butenko, S., 2010. Risk-based maintenance
and rehabilitation decisions for transportation infrastructure networks. Transp.
Res. Part A 44, 236–248.
Sohn, J., 2006. Evaluating the significance of highway network links under the flood
damage: an accessibility approach. Transp. Res. Part A 40, 491–506.
Suarez, P., Anderson, W., Mahal, V., Lakshmanan, T.R., 2005. Impacts of flooding and
climate change on urban transportation: a system wide performance
assessment of the boston metro area. Transp. Res. Part D 10, 231–244.
Sullivan, J.L., Novak, D.C., Aultman-Hall, L., Scott, D.M., 2010. Identifying critical road
segments and measuring system-wide robustness in transportation networks
with isolating links. Transp. Res. Part A 44, 323–336.
Taylor, M.A.P., Susilawati, S., 2012. Remoteness and accessibility in the vulnerability
analysis of regional road networks. Transp. Res. Part A 46, 761–771.
Taylor, M.A.P., Sekhar, S.V.C., D’Este, G.M., 2006. Application of accessibility based
methods for vulnerability analysis of strategic road networks. Netw. Spatial
Econom. 3 (6), 267–291.
Van Berkum, E., Weijermars, W., Hagens, A., 2006. The impact of weather on urban
travel demand in the Netherlands. In: Paper Presented at the EURO Working
Group for Transportation Conference, Technical University of Bari, Bari, Italy,
2006.
Watling, D., Balijepalli, N.C., 2012. A method to assess demand growth vulnerability
of travel times on road network links. Transp. Res. Part A 46, 772–789.