2013 年 1 巻 1 号 p. 276-285
The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 resulted in not only 19, 000 deaths and missing persons, mainly in the Tohoku Region, but also the evacuation of more than 400, 000 people during the peak period. Although such disasters are very rare, creating robust civil engineering structures to prevent potential threats would be a diffcult task.
On the other hand, even though information and communication technologies are just one of the means available, they have significant potential in terms of organically connecting support from people in a variety of capacities when an emergency arises. From this perspective, keywords such as “evacuation training,” “group relocation,” “real-time tsunami sensing,” and “soft disaster preventions” emerged as a result of this earthquake.
I would like to describe how people utilize information and communication technologies as a mediating channel to secure their safety and security during earthquakes, whether autonomously or at other times through the protection provided by infrastructure facilities. In particular, the emergency mapping technology involving manual preparation as well as input from probe cars is introduced in Section 2 as a successful example of how information technology could serve as a mediating channel. Furthermore, in Section 3, I will describe the activities for the Open Government that did not necessarily function as a mediating channel but remain major issues for the future. In Section 4, the mobile phone technology is discussed in order to consider how mediating channels can be provided on a real-time basis, with consideration for the future.
