Current State of Voluntary Disaster Prevention Organizations and Possibility of ICT Support

Abstract

Mutual help is important in occurrence of natural disasters, and Basic Disaster Countermeasure Act provides that voluntary disaster prevention organizations should be prepared. Voluntary disaster prevention organizations became widely known after the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 and its coverage ratio reaches 84.7% in 2022. .However, high coverage ratio does not necessarily mean well prepared for natural disasters. In this paper, we show some results of nation-wide web questionnaire survey on voluntary disaster prevention organizations conducted in 2023 and discuss some methods for activate and functionalize those voluntary disaster prevention organizations only in name.