Development and social implementation of the “Nige-Tore” smartphone app for improving tsunami evacuation drills: Synergistic interactions between “commitment” and “contingency”

Abstract

This research explored how we can improve tsunami evacuation behavior, which has been a major social issue since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011. We introduced a smartphone app, “Nige-Tore,” for supporting tsunami evacuation drills, which was developed using an interdisciplinary research framework. “Nige-Tore” is an effective tool for visualizing the dynamic interactions between human actions; e.g., evacuation behavior, and natural phenomena; e.g., tsunami movements. An analysis of the social implementation of “Nige-Tore” showed that the app was more powerful than conventional tsunami evacuation tools and methods, such as hazard maps and traditional drills, because it produced a positive synergy between “commitment” and “contingency.” “Commitment” is a mindset in which people fixate on a current scenario and consider it to be inevitable, while “contingency” is a mindset in which people relativize a current scenario as one of various possible scenarios. This synergy helps people to cope with unexpected events.