For this research project, toward the formulation of a business continuity plan for welfare facilities for the disabled in the event of a disaster, a two-day workshop for 42 management staff of 41 welfare facilities for the disabled in 6 prefectures, was held. During the workshop, first the imaginative capacity for disaster management was heightened through reading educational materials based on interview investigation to the facilities suffered from by the Great East Japan Earthquake, and specific lessons were extracted from the afflicted facilities' experiences on issues of evacuation management, and so on. Next, based on these lessons, discussion took place regarding issues requiring reconsideration in each facility's current fire and disaster contingency plans, and specific strategies for improvement. Further, this paper reports the results of discussion on the bottleneck in welfare facilities for the disabled regarding future BCP formulations, and solutions thereto.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify the current way of living in staircase type public apartments for infill development of dwelling units. Findings are as follows: 1) The space named DK is not enough for both dining and kitchen; 2) The independent space as a dressing room and an entrance are required; 3) Often the north side room with balcony is used as living space; 4) The residents utilize small spaces as a variety of rooms.

View full abstract

A purpose of this article become known the reason for this activity existence which support for 0 years old children and parents, and clarify the role of a university in the field of community-based child-care. First, I report the child-care and family support activities conducted in 2012 in "play with a baby! at Naruto University of education". Students continuously planned and practiced childcare support activities for the parents and children who participated in this activity. Second, we investigated the growth of the students as future child-care workers in their professional abilities concerning practical child-care. And the growth was seen by the parents and children who participated. On the basis of these growth, the role of the local aid for childcare in a university was clarified at the last.

View full abstract

In recent years, the administrative and maintenance expenses of roads have been reduced over time, and the maintenance management level has been lowered. The degradation of road maintenance is endangering pedestrian's safety and comfortability and is causing an increase in citizen complaints about poor maintenance. In order to assure the continued safety and confortability of the pedestrian space, it is necessary to quantitatively grasp the influence of sidewalk cleaning level on user's safety and comfortability. With a special focus on street litter such as fallen leaves, this study measures pedestrian's stress by using heart rate variability through "Halter electrocardiograph", and assesses the walking comfortability. Furthermore, walking safety is evaluated based on the monitoring of pedestrian's behavior and a questionnaire survey, and the influence of sidewalk cleaning level is psychological and behaviorally examined.

View full abstract