Ways of Using the Tsunami Evacuation Drill Application “Nigetore”

Abstract

Local residents are considered to play the main role in their own evacuation in the event of a tsunami. However, evacuation drills are almost always organized by local governments or disaster preparedness experts. This has led to a lack of flexibility on the part of local residents and the government concerning the roles that each should play to prevent disasters. To resolve this problem, we developed a tsunami evacuation drill smartphone application called “Nigetore”, which was developed with the help of local residents. In this study, we demonstrated ways to use “Nigetore” and found that it not only helped residents resolve issues with group evacuation drills, but also helped them obtain information about shelters, evacuation routes, and transportation and was helpful for people with difficulties in moving. The diverse functionality of the application has two implications. First, local residents could organize their own evacuation drills instead of relying on local government to do so for them, which helped solve the problem of inflexible roles. Second, “Nigetore” presents residents with the open-ended problem of how to evacuate with telling them the correct response, so they had to develop their own ability to decide the best way to evacuate.