Basic Research on Improving the Quality of Evacuation Life:

From interviews with people who have experience in running an evacuation shelter

Abstract

This study aims to explore the elements necessary to solve the problem of shelter quality in disaster-affected areas in Japan. The researchers identified twelve positive deviant good practice evacuation shelter management cases from four significant disasters over the past ten years. Interviews with twelve leaders were transcribed. Three disaster researchers from sociology, public health, and architectural backgrounds as well as two crisis management practitioners independently extracted key terms from the same transcript. Through the Affinity Diagram method, eight mutually exclusive super-conceptual clusters emerged. Five out of eight super-clusters corresponded with areas that were prescribed by the National government-issued Evacuation Shelter Management Guideline. Three unique super-clusters also appeared to be characteristic of the competent shelter operation.