Game Theory: Florida’s Evacuation for Hurricane Irma
With Hurricane Irma one day away from being the most devastating hurricane to hit Florida in over 20 years, millions of people living in Florida have been told to evacuate.
However, Darlena Cunha, a writer for the Washington Post, explains that with Florida only having two interstate highways, it is impossible to evacuate. Cars, doomed to idle without any exits or gas stations in sight, have simply made these highways into massive parking lots. Furthermore, gas supply is almost depleted throughout southern Florida, making even attempting to take the highway a non-possibility. In addition, despite knowing that she is stuck in her home, she cannot take safety measures (i.e. boarding up windows), because all necessary supplies have been out of stock as soon as the hurricane was announced.
This topic relates to Game Theory, since every person’s actions in Florida affect everyone else’s. The players of this game would be the citizens of Florida, and like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, all the players are solely looking out for themselves. Furthermore, since there are so many players, we can assume that they cannot possibly all communicate a strategy. This exact situation can explain the shortages and traffic issues during evacuation. For example, the gas shortage mainly happened because people who did not urgently need gas chose to top off their gas tanks rather than leave some for those who truly needed it. This in turn led to those without gas deciding to risk evacuating through the highway, which led to those same people running out of gas there, causing further traffic and eventual blockage.
However, everyone mentioned made the best decision for themselves, which in turn turned out to be the suboptimal decision for everyone as a whole. The outcome was similar to the test/project situation and the Prisoner’s Dilemma, except here everyone had the possibility of communicating and modern technology at their fingertips.
Article Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/08/we-cant-leave-florida-but-we-cant-stay-either-help-us/?utm_term=.070a353a1418