Index to Evaluate Tsunami Evacuation Potential and its Validation at Yamada, Iwate Prefecture

Abstract

Over 18,000 people were killed or went missing in Tohoku district Pacific coast communities during the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster. The author proposes a victim index, a simple index to evaluate tsunami evacuation potential, for comprehensively evaluating the ease of evacuation and the evacuation capability of residents in communities based on field research data, and determined the index values for 13 villages of Yamada town, Iwate prefecture. Whether the index values matched regional features was analyzed using interview survey data on evacuation actions of residents by the Joint Survey Group on Tsunami Evacuation during the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster (team for Yamada and Ishinomaki) (Appendix A). As a result, under some restrictions, the difference in features related to the evacuation capability of affected communities could be explained well using the victim index. This index is applicable to compare damaged factors among the communities and allows for the objective analysis of damage potential of each community.