Abstract
Recent heavy rain disasters in Japan showed the fact that although government issued
evacuation information, there were people who did not evacuate. This indicates that evacuation
information based on science, which is institutionalized as a decision-making mechanism
for government, is not properly utilized by public. This study conducted surveys to residents
of Mabi Town, Kurashiki City, Japan, which was severely flooded due to the Western Japan
heavy rain of July, 2018. The study tried to identify factors which triggered risk awareness
of residents comprehensively, and examined how those factors contributed to evacuation
decision-makings using “Evacuation Act Curve,” the method adapted to the “Recovery Curve”
surveys. As a result, the study revealed the fact that residents were tend to evacuate based on
changes in familiar environment rather than science-based information, which means that
disaster information was still not considered as familiar information.
