Ethical dilemmas in disaster evacuation network planning: concepts and frameworks

Abstract Ethical considerations in evacuation network planning are crucial for ensuring the strategy's effectiveness and equity, as well as for increasing public trust in the government and the emergency management system. Whilst existing research often focuses on equity, prioritisation, humanitarianism, etc., there is a gap in directly analysing the ethical dimensions. This study aims to address these gaps by leveraging insights from existing literature to resolve ethical dilemmas and develop a comprehensive framework for ethical research. The scope of this review is limited to ethical considerations in the planning and design stages, rather than operational or post-disaster management phases. Our main contributions in this study are threefold: (1) examine ethical concepts and dilemmas in evacuation network planning, detailing key relationships of concepts and literature analysis; (2) summarise and evaluate qualitative and quantitative research approaches on disaster evacuation ethics, highlighting their importance; and (3) identify research gaps in disaster evacuation ethics research and propose a framework to address these issues and guide future work. We are concerned with conflict dilemmas in ethical concepts such as equity and prioritisation, internal and external contradictions of vulnerable groups, and so on. To this end, we propose a new concept, Ethical Cascading Failure (ECF), based on the literature review. Finally, we present a research pathway for evacuation network planning that addresses future ECF, along with a framework integrating multiple philosophical perspectives. The intended and potential beneficiaries of this study are government officials, planners, and individuals interested in ethical considerations in evacuation planning.