Abstract
Effective geography education measures are required to prepare children for possible future megadisasters.
Tsunami evacuation drills have been widely conducted for this purpose in coastal schools in
Japan. The social recognition of disasters in disaster prevention education during geography classes
should include “knowing and understanding” disasters and acquiring “the ability to evacuate” in
emergencies. Many refugees will concentrate on designated evacuation sites in densely populated
urban areas. Therefore, practical evacuation procedures based on the continuously changing conditions
of local evacuation sites should be provided by assuming that it might be impossible to evacuate to a
predetermined site. This article first clarifies map-based geography educational problems in disaster
preparation and the limits of tsunami evacuation drills conducted in elementary schools. The following
theoretical frameworks for utilizing maps were developed to solve the problem of using maps.
(1) Repeatedly testing and evaluating the validity of evacuation.
(2) Developing continuous risk-taking decisions on evacuation.
(3) Personalizing evacuation drills.
(4) Conducting evacuation simulations for various disaster scenarios in different situations.
(5) Localizing disaster prevention education by each school.
(6) Clarifying how to use maps as a risk communication tool at home.
DIG and Crossroad, or Dig-Cro, a map-based evacuation training method, and the “Oshima disaster
prevention map for children,” a risk communication tool for home, were developed for elementary
schools in densely populated, coastal urban areas based on these theoretical frameworks. Dig-Cro
simulates personalized evacuation (Yamori, 2016) by combining “DIG” (Komura & Hirano, 1997) and
"Crossroad" (Yamori et al., 2005). In this method, children continuously make risk-taking decisions
using "Crossroad" by moving a pawn representing themselves on a disaster site map.
Also, to prevent local disaster images from being stereotyped, a lesson unit was developed for
repeatedly simulating different disaster scenarios under various situations based on the “Project-Based
learning concept” (Yoshimizu, 2018). The above activities provided opportunities for children to (1)
evaluate whether they can evacuate; (2) ensure continuous individual risk-taking decision-making; (3)
personalize children’s’ evacuation drills; (4) repeatedly work on evacuation simulations under different
disaster situations; and (5) develop a localized disaster scenario for each school. Furthermore, (6) a risk
communication tool for home use was provided by clarifying map use. The results suggested that Dig-
Cro might overcome disaster prevention education problems in geography classes and solve problems
and limitations of tsunami evacuation training.
