The objective of this study was to conduct a quantitative analysis of disaster information channels and the role of neighborhood ties and regional activities in structuring evacuation procedures in two districts of Tarumizu city in Kagoshima Prefecture prone to similar disasters but with different evacuation procedures.

The analysis of residents to evacuate show that they belonged to regional organizations, had participated actively in regional activities, and had deep neighborhood ties. Moreover, in addition to the formal disaster information channels, majority of these communities also received information through informal information channels.

We concluded that the social relations and informal channels were very important for evacuation on disaster, and thus would have a major impact on the effectiveness of regional disaster prevention.

It is examined by this paper whether Twitter is effective as a tool which disseminates the information about a disaster. By the East Japan great earthquake disaster that occurred on March 11, 2011, it was pointed out as a source of the various false rumors about the nuclear power plant. In this paper, the heavy rain disaster by the typhoon No. 12 which passed through Kansai from September 2 to 4, 2011 had been taken as an example. In Totsukawa-mura, Nara, the whole village stood alone for a while, and electricity, a telephone, every lifeline including the water service did not function. The news by media ran into difficulties not to be able to enter the village because it was difficult to know the situation. It was Twitter that was then useful to disaster information dissemination. Much information was sent for an urgent account made for the disaster. Furthermore, the person who arranged the information that gathered on a map in a mass appeared. The appearance of the disaster situation of Totsukawa-mura became clear gradually. Twitter is shown to have taken an important role at the disaster by this example. Furthermore, as a result of having examined reliability and spread power, when there is little information, it indicates that Twitter is very useful.

In 11th March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC). This was the largest earthquake ever recorded to hit Japan in its history and one of the biggest in the world until now. The earthquake triggered a tsunami that hit coastal areas of Japan.

In response to this unprecedented disaster, the industry-government-academic group was formed as Emergency Mapping Team (EMT) and Emergency Mapping Center (EMC) was established, in order to standardize the situational awareness at the national level. From the day after the disaster, EMC carried out their activities for one and a half months in a special meeting room for Disaster Management at Cabinet Office.

The purpose of this research is to determine the kind of GIS skill that is needed to prepare uniform quality maps in EMC at National government level, with the involvement of numerous organizations and individuals.

In this research, considering the activity of EMT as an example of mapping, the maps prepared based on the user needs were analyzed. The Analysis was done on the basis of functional side directly related with visualization and processing elements which were indirectly involved. On the basis of this analysis, generalizations visualization skills needed for the country level responses were proposed.

Even though many residents could have some information like tsunami warning or else, after destructive shaking in the coastal districts, their evacuation activities could not be carried out appropriately in the Great East Japan Earthquake. So, we focused on the broadcast behavior of NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) as one of the representative ‘reality-stakeholder.’

By conducting a content analysis of NHK's disaster reporting, 2 principal problems were found regarding co-constructing social reality as a ‘Media event.’

First, NHK's reporting was constructed on the principle of the so-called ‘Tokyo-centrism,’ therefore, did not sufficiently contain specific and concrete details regarding the ‘locality’ of disaster information. Second, NHK's reporting could not appeal effectively for the viewers or listeners to build the recognition of the function as a ‘reality-stakeholder’ faced with the crises. Both problems were connected the basic format of the broadcasts.

Tohoku tsunami occurred at March, 11, 2011. During this even, tsunami warning was issued to all regions among Pacific Coast, and all Mass media broadcasted about tsunamis. This situation was similar to Chile Tsunami in 2010. In this paper, we grasp behaviors of residents at Tohoku Tsunami occurrence, and compare evacuation behavior form Tohoku tsunami with Chile Tsunami. And we develop the decision making of tsunami evacuation model considering scale of tremor, height of tsunami in expectation by tsunami warning and kind of evacuation order. Therefore I carried out a questionnaire survey for the residents who lived in the large area of the Pacific coast.

As the result, the factor that affected residents' evacuation behavior the most was “evacuation order”. Most of residents who got the evacuation order have evacuated form tsunamis. In addition, tsunami warning, 3 meters height of tsunami in expectation, cannot urge residents to evacuate from tsunamis. On the other hand, the rates of residents who evacuated from Chile Tsunami but did not evacuate from Tohoku Tsunami were approximately 60%. One of the reasons was that these residents remember that almost regions were attacked smaller tsunamis than expectation at Chile Tsunami in 2010.

In March 2011, massive earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku occurred, giant tsunami exceed expected attacked, 25,000 fishing-boats were affected. The purpose of reducing of damages of fishing-boats against tsunami, many fishermen evacuated it to the offing. But in 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, we checked the example which fishermen suffered great deal of damage. Therefore, securing of security of the fishermen against tsunami and the need of the reexamination of the correspondence policy about evacuating fishing-boat to the offing became clear some other time.

We formulated the rules of fishing-boat's evacuation to the offing the purpose of optimizing the correspondence action of it when tsunami attack, as for Ochiishi fishery cooperative fishermen in Nemuro City. The effect of the rules formulated revealed from the correspondence action of fishermen in tsunami of Chile Earthquake, 2010. But this earthquake had no shaking and lots of time to reach the tsunami, and the tsunami didn't even attack such extensive damage. Therefore, it's said that the effect of the rules formulated was limited. In this paper, we revalidated the effect of the rules formulated by grasping the action of fishermen's fishing-boats evacuation against tsunami, when giant tsunami caused by 2011 Tohoku Earthquake attacked. At the result, also in giant tsunami attacked comparatively for short time, we checked the effect of the rules formulated which many fishermen evacuated fishing-boat to the safe offing at early timing and stood by offing until the danger of tsunami became low. And we extracted the issues and policy to promote appropriate action of fishermen's fishing-boats evacuation against tsunami in the future.

Japan Meteorological Agency started the service of Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) to the public since October 1, 2007. The warning is widely broadcasted by TV, radio and mobile phone in the area whose JMA intensity is expected to be more than 4. In order to make the best use of the lead time before the arrival of strong tremors for reducing casualties, enhancing people's knowledge and capacity to take proper actions after the warning is essential.

There was a small earthquake in Fukushima Prefecture on September 29, 2010. The expected intensity in the Tokyo metropolitan area exceeded 4 and EEW was provided although observed intensity was less than 4. Recently, the percentage of the people who can get EEW by mobile phones is increasing. At this earthquake, a lot of people received the warning by mobile phone in the Tokyo metropolitan area and it became a good opportunity for making people familiar with EEW. After this, the off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011 and numerous aftershocks continued. EEW was successfully provided in Tohoku area at the main shocks. On the other hand, in the Tokyo metropolitan area, EEW failed at the main shock but frequently announced at aftershocks. However, some of the warning at aftershocks failed to estimate intensity properly due to technical limitation.

In this paper, two questionnaire surveys were conducted to understand people's awareness of EEW. The first one was done after the earthquake in September 2010 for the people who received the warning by mobile phone. The second one was done after the earthquake in Tohoku region in March 2011. The change of their awareness was analyzed comparing both results. Their behavior after receiving the warning was also analyzed and suggestions for enhancing their capacity to take proper actions after EEW were obtained.

In this paper, authors have expanded the existing disaster response management system for information sharing, by tacking on a capability of inter-organizational coordination. A new training process of inter-organizational disaster responses for local government employees during natural disasters with use of the system is developed and it is named as BECAUSE model, where BECAUSE is composed of the following six steps: preparation BEfore training, Confidence, Awareness, Understanding, Solution and Enactment. The model is applied to a city and a town in Yamanashi prefecture. Disaster response exercise is carried out at the final step of BECAUSE model, and the effectiveness of the model is verified in the capability of local government employees for both disaster response and digital work of the developed system.

Mutual help is important in occurrence of disasters, and Basic Disasters Countermeasure Act provides that residents' disaster prevention organizations should be prepared. Residents' disaster prevention organizations became widely known after the Hanshin Awaji Earthquake, with its coverage ratio reaching 74.4 percent in 2010. However, high coverage ratio does not necessarily mean well prepared.

In our study we hypothesized that in spite of rising coverage ratio residents' willingness to join and sense of belonging to residents' disaster prevention organization is low. According to the hypothesis we conducted a nationwide web survey to reveal the residents' attitude towards residents' disaster prevention organizations and what is needed to vitalize its activities.

As a result, it was found that recognition of membership of residents' disaster prevention organizations was only 9.2 percent, even though 45.0 percent were participating in disaster prevention drills, revealing a large difference between coverage ratios. However, interest towards residents' disaster prevention organizations was 46.7 percent and willingness to join 28.7 percent, showing higher figures.

We believe it has been shown that there are possibilities to transform residents' disaster prevention organizations into functioning organizations by evoking interest and strengthening sense of belonging through effective marketing activities.