Abstract
As one of the series of field surveys on human response during and after an earthquake, an interview method was introduced and carried out at the occurrence of the 1978 Miyagiken-oki earthquake for elucidating details about time-dependent behavioral patterns under drastically changing environments.
A group of housewives living in apartment houses of the identical housing plan was chosen in Sendai city so as to reduce number of spatial factors which may diversify human behaviors. Behaviors and changes of indoor circumstances such as by scattering and overturning furniture were interviewed in detail. Number of children in home, fire sources in use and so on was noted. Simultaneously, a questionnaire survey for estimating seismic intensities was performed to the housewives and also to the inhabitants of the surrounding area.
Results obtained are as follows.
(i) Behaviors which range widely from very passive and do-nothing situation to restless movement, can tentatively be classified into 5 typical patterns in terms of 3 unit processes defined as single action, point-to-point movement, and stand-by posture.
(ii) Seismic intensity is higher by 0.5 on the 5th floor than on the 1st floor, and accordingly overturned furniture are larger in number on upper floors. For better understanding of occupants' behaviors, however, another factor such as distance to the ground surface should be considered.
(iii) Housewives behave more actively and restlessly, under the circumstance that there are children to be protected and/or fire sources in use. This was proved by counting number of unit actions and by measuring totally moved distance during shaking.
