From the viewpoint of speech act theory, this paper discusses recent practical problems pertaining to disaster information and proposes a solution. One of the essential findings in speech act theory is the distinction between constative and performative utterances. A constative utterance (e.g., “this is a pencil”) describes an outer world as a normative standard into which the utterance fits. Oppositely, a performative utterance (e.g., “please open the door”) describes what is required for an outer world to fit into the utterance. From among the many types of disaster information, we first consider two types: typhoon and tsunami information released by the Japanese Meteorological Agency and evacuation directives/advisories announced by local governments. The typhoon and tsunami information is mostly categorized as constative utterances, and the evacuation directives/advisories are categorized as performative utterances. For disaster reduction, it is critical to make evacuation directives/advisories more powerful and persuasive. However, most recent research has focused on improving the accuracy of meteorological forecasts. Research along these lines has yet to overcome major social problems related to disaster information, such as low evacuation rates and overreliance on disaster information. Declarative utterances (e.g., “I declare the meeting closed”) are a third type of utterance: They bridge constative and performative utterances and can serve as a key to solving problems related to disaster information. For example, the “evacuation declaration procedure” has been shown to be effective for safe, early evacuation. In this procedure, local residents themselves, with the assistance of disaster experts, establish a local evacuation criterion in advance. When an emergency approaches, the “evacuation declaration” is issued as soon as the condition is met, prompting residents to evacuate quickly.

In this commentary on K. Yamori (2016), I pointed out three main problems of his arguments from the technical viewpoint of Speech Act Theory. First, Yamori adopted a peculiar kind of theoretical framework based on the distinction between “constative sentences” and “performative sentences”. However J.L. Austin (1960) concluded that this distinction was not appropriate for the theoretical basis, partly because it could mislead an analysis of speech acts. Actually it brought the second problem to Yamori's arguments, namely a confusion of illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Thirdly, he misunderstood some of the characteristics of “declarative sentences” (a declarative type of illocutionary acts), and ignored the fact that propositional contents of declaratives cannot refer to brute facts such as evacuation behaviors, but only to institutional facts. Instead, I reevaluated the “evacuation declarative procedure” which Yamori proposed, by taking another view to regard it as a “commisive” type of illocutionary acts for committing evacuation behaviors by utterers themselves.

In the disaster prevention and mitigation measures of individuals, seismic reinforcement and safety of the room are very important. In order to make the individuals overcome various psychological hurdles to perform these measures, various efforts for the necessity of the measures are carried out. Their typical framework is a conscious awareness by the experience of shaking of an earthquake; however, there is a fundamental dilemma that the more enhancing the reality of the shaking to enhance the "awareness effect," the more dangerous the conduct itself to experience the shaking of the earthquake.

The present study approaches such a problem by combining the development of software technology with the existing hardware technology. We have developed a disaster reduction awareness-raising tool by combining the "visualized shaking" 3D images of virtual reality with seismic experience hardware environment by making a distributed interoperation server capable of calculating the seismic response at any point of any building and delivering it via network as a key technology. As a feature of the present study, it can accomplish both "shaking experience with safety and reality/persuasiveness at a higher level" by the combination of software and hardware. Furthermore, because the virtual reality software is constructed for general purposes, it can be easily add-on into the existing seismic sensory environment, enabling to utilize it as an effective technology for improving the effectiveness of disaster mitigation centers across the country.

The avoidance of overlooking increases the frequency of false alarms, and the avoidance of false alarms increases the frequency of overlooking. We call the former a “high frequency strategy” situation and the latter a “low frequency strategy” situation. The dilemma between the above strategies is inevitable because of the technical limitation in generating hazardous assessment information. Regarding this issue, the Japan Cabinet Office announced a “high frequency strategy” policy in the Guidelines for Preparing Manuals in Issuance and Transmission of Evacuation Advisory, September 2014. From the perspective of high frequency of evacuation advisories in the future, it seems that it is necessary to cultivate deeper discussions and reconsiderations about the merits and demerits of “permitting false alarms,” “high frequency strategy,” and “low frequency strategy.”

In this paper, based on data collected through a psychological experiment, we investigated the effects of repetition of false evacuation advisory on residents' decision making regarding evacuation behavior. From the results of the investigation, the following conclusions were reached. The merit of an evacuation advisory based on the high frequency strategy was able to be observed only at a comparatively short initial stage after the introduction of an evacuation advisory. After the middle stage, merits were not observed and instead some demerits were conspicuous.

Regional evacuation has been one of the important issues in disaster management, because large-scale flooding is expected to occur due to large-scale typhoon or extremely heavy rainfall. In order to perform effective regional evacuation and to minimize loss of life, the establishment of a collaboration system with relevant administrative agencies is essential. In this paper, authors proposed a training process using the BECAUSE model and applied to the establishment of the system. As the final process, E in the BECAUSE model, a disaster response exercise on regional evacuation which all relevant administrative agencies took part in, was carried out. As a result, regional cooperation was performed on the evacuation to the suburbs, the inflow regulation of the car to the inundation area, and evacuation to a driveway, and participants understood that information sharing was indispensable for regional cooperation.

In disaster responses, it is fundamental to unify recognition and understanding of spatial conditions. It is also important to share and collaboratively apply geographical information with the use of a geographic information system (GIS). Disaster Volunteer Centers (VCs), one of the leading actors involved in the restoration and recovery of damaged areas, are only able to effectively achieve this by utilizing geographical information through GIS. Therefore, through actual case studies, during which the authors visited the damaged areas after the occurrence of disasters, and during which fieldwork and research supported the use of GIS, the geospatial information and utilization method were clarified. The disasters in these case studies include: the tornado on May 6, 2012 (Tsukuba City, Ibaraki), the earthquake in the northern region of Nagano Prefecture in November 2014 (Hakuba Village, Nagano), and the Kanto-Tohoku torrential rains in September 2015 (Jousou City, Ibaraki). Based on these three case studies, the information to be created, acquired, and shared were clarified. The geospatial information which the disaster VCs utilized was shared. As further studies, the necessity of standardized operations for the disaster VCs; the preparation of support tools, including GIS; and the establishment of a system to sharing geospatial information from the disaster prevention-related institution were indicated.

Place names stemming from tsunami disasters can be a medium to transfer the previous tsunami disaster traditions. In this paper, we obtained information related to place names described as “a place name stemming froma tsunami” or “a high possibility that the place name stems from a tsunami” frompublished books. We focused on the areas affected by the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and the tsunami in the Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures. We categorized the place names using the KJ method and investigated their spatial distribution. Consequently, we drew the following four main conclusions. 1) Possibly, 110 place names in the three prefectures stem from past tsunami disasters. 2) Place names are broadly categorized into two types: “stemming from a tsunami episode” and “stemming from a sound related to Tsunami”. Furthermore, place names stemming from tsunami episodes are categorized into four types: “stemming from something that was washed away,” “stemming from the behavior of a tsunami,” “stemming from Amida Buddha praying,” and “stemming from other episodes.” 3) Places with names stemming from tsunami episodes are located in the north of Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture. The area corresponds to the Sanriku coastal area, where huge tsunamis have struck repeatedly. This observation indicates that experiences of past tsunami disasters may be preserved in place names stemming from tsunami episodes. 4) Although all the towns with place names stemming from tsunamis are located in the tsunami inundation area of the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, they represent only 10% of the total number of towns in the inundation area. In addition, the number of areas where the place names stemming from tsunamis can transfer the tsunami disaster traditions is small in a cases of large disasters, such as the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami.

The purpose of this research is to classify the conditions for application and assess the practical importance of two types of theories. The ‘deficiency model' in science communication theory (“knowledge transmission model”) assumes that information is transmitted from experts with scientific knowledge to citizens with a lack of scientific knowledge. In LPP theory (“participation to practice model”), learning is formulated as “legitimate peripheral participation in community of practice”. LPP theory interprets learning as identity building. We utilize the theories not only for analyzing the reality of the practice, but also for interpreting how an ideal model would affect the course of practice. An Ideal model of disaster education may include both the “knowledge transmission model”, and “participation to practice model”. As disaster education benefits from both models, using one rather than other is likely to result in causing a gap in our understanding.

The theoretical assumptions associated with these models were tested through a case study involving two elementary schools. We conducted our case study in collaboration with the Mamten seismic observation project, which attempts to get elementary school children involved in cutting-edge seismological research by placing mini-size seismometers in two schools, we conducted our case study. As the result of learning, students are given the role of seismometer maintenance as their identity building.

Based on the case studies of the two schools, both theories contributed to disaster education, however, the LPP theory applied to use of the seismometer helped students at the school with disaster experience to overcome pessimism about effectively dealing with a future disaster.

In the Great East Japan Earthquake, the refinery was severely damaged by the tsunami or/and fire. As a result, the maximum 4,516,424B/D had domestic crude oil refining capacity immediately fell to 3,003,924B/D after the disaster. Areas where affected by the Nankai Trough Megaquake has more oil refineries than the region were affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, the impact is concerned. In this study, crude oil refining capacity of each region after the occurrence of the Nankai Trough Megaquakes was estimated on the basis of the damage track record of the Great East Japan Earthquake. As a result, when the Nankai Trough Megaquake has occurred, the worst case was revealed that crude oil refining capacity of our country is reduced to 16.8% (657,500B/D) before the catastrophe. A case where human suffering is the maximum and worst case from the point of view of crude oil refining capacity was found to be different. In terms of region, Kanto region is crude oil refining capacity is restored in a relatively early stage. Kinki and Chugoku was there is a difference in the transition of the crude oil refining capacity by the case. On the other hand, Chubu, Shikoku, Kyushu crude oil refining capacity has become clear that follow the same trend in all cases.

During heavy rainfall disaster, one of the important activities of municipalities is to understand the disaster risk in the region, and if required, is to call attention to the residents. Municipality acquires various information, and they must determine the correspondence based thereon. However, telephone reports from residents increase as the situation progresses, it's said to be one of the factors to inhibits the understanding of the critical information, and delay the decision. From a different viewpoint, the telephone report can be regarded as the disaster information with a property of "number is increased as the situation progresses". By utilizing this property, the number of telephone report is possible to be an effective information for understanding the disaster risk in the region.

Our study aim to clarify that changes in number of telephone reports during heavy rainfall disaster is related to transition of precipitation. In addition, we aim to clarify that the place of damage is related to the location of the telephone reports.

First, we revealed that many of the damage has occurred near of the location of the telephone report. After that, we subdivided the region, and revealed that heavy rain has led an increase in the number of telephone report and occurrence of damage.

Consequently, aggregating the number of telephone report had been shown to be an useful measure for estimating heavy rainfall disaster.

It is becoming increasingly important to maintain essential local administrative function when disaster strikes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the issues concerning the local governments' current developments of measures and the plans for continuity of operation based on the survey results. The data was obtained from approximately 500 local government offices nationwide in the form of a questionnaire.

The more kinds of severe weather information are used in Japan, so the information is getting more difficult to understand adequately. For the improvement, introduction of severe level expression into the information is in discussion by Japan Meteorological Agency. However, the severe level expression has some issues that users couldn't understand disaster risks of each levels and couldn't use severe level information properly.

This study aims to develop educational material “My Weather: A Game” for users to understand severe weather level from local and familiar perspectives and use the level information properly. Through this game, we can study the situation of each levels and enhance the consciousness of not only getting weather information but using the information for prevention disaster in view of each disaster risks. Moreover, this game can lead the exchange of consciousness of weather information through the conversation among participants.

In this study, 3 trials of this game were conducted and we check the availability of this game and consciousness of disaster risk which participants have about weather information. Also, the change of consciousness about use of weather information was checked after the game.

As a result, the difference existed between disaster risks expressed by present severe weather information and shown by participants. Moreover, consciousness about use of weather information was improved.