Abstract
A psychological experiment was made to verify the effectiveness of the Early Earthquake Warning (EEW) by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). Fifty-eight students were subjected to this experiment and experienced an artificial earthquake, which was made by an earthquake experience vehicle (EV). Since this experiment assumes the situation in Shizuoka City under the Tokai Earthquake, which is an interplate earthquake and is thought to occur in near future beneath the city, the seismic intensity on the EV is set to be 7 in the JMA scale and a lead time between the EEW alarm and the beginning of the earthquake shaking is set to be 9 seconds. To discriminate the effect of EEW and that of the knowledge about EEW and self-defense actions, the 58 students were pre-divided into 4 groups: (1) a group given an EEW alarm and pre-lecture about EEW and self-defense actions, (2) a group given an EEW alarm but no pre-lecture, (3) a group given no EEW alarm but the pre-lecture, and (4) a group given no EEW alarm and no pre-lecture. Quality of self-defense actions of each student during the earthquake was observed and evaluated. Statistical tests reveal that EEW is significantly effective and also that the suitable self-defense actions after the EEW alarm are probably promoted by refreshing the knowledge about the actions.
