This paper aims to reveal effects of disaster structural understanding on Residents' behavioral intention under disaster developing process. In recent studies, some research which are based on Behavioral Intention Model (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Ajzen, 1991) pointed out disaster evacuation that people fail to evacuate rapidly by their own decision without behavioral intention.

People need an ability which anticipate an event to occur one after the other along disaster developing process to increase behavioral intention. If people try to take this ability, they shouldn't have fragmented understanding but Structural understanding to make sure whole disaster developing process. But, former studies haven't revealed effects of disaster structural understanding on Residents' behavioral intention yet.

The author surveyed residents' disaster structural understanding about river flood and their actions against disaster in Kinugawa river flood caused by Kanto-Tohoku Heavy Rainfall disaster (2015) by a questionnaire survey for three hundred internet monitors in seven towns as bellows; Jyousou, Yuuki, Shimotsuma, Moriya, Chikusei, Tsukubamirai and Yachiyo. All towns are riverside of the Kinugawa River and were at risk of Kanto-Tohoku Heavy Rainfall disaster. After surveyed, the author categorized respondents for three groups corresponding to their disaster structural understanding as high-level, middle-level and low-level.

The results show that high-level and middle-level groups get some disaster information earlier than low-level group. The earliness of increasing behavioral intention is similar to the earliness of getting some disaster information, high-level and middle-level groups increase behavioral intention earlier than low-level group.

This research examined breaking news program broadcasted on NHK TV on March 11, 2011, which informed tsunami warning, but, failed to evoke audience's quick responses. Major objective of this research is to clarify risk communication gap between those who sent risk information and who received it. One of the notable methodological characteristics of this research is a reflective self-analysis of the news program, conducted by a newscaster himself. The result of self-reflective analysis on how the newscaster announced the warnings in the program was coupled with the result of interview surveys with 30 audiences, which showed how the audiences reacted to the tsunami warnings informed in the TV program. Finally, the authors proposed some new procedures of broadcasting tsunami threat to achieve more proper responses from the audience.

At the time of Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, many foreigners were found to be information illiterate. After the earthquake, it was shown that many foreigners were unable to understand Japanese used for informational purposes, even though they had studied Japanese. The purpose of this study is to investigate the vocabulary, expressions, and grammatical patterns used in disaster information that are difficult for Japanese language learners to understand. Using KH Coder, a morphological analysis tool, the author analyzed announcement data that are still used in Osaka for earthquake and tsunami warnings and alerts. The author collected 115 words of frequent vocabulary, 12 frequent expressions, and 11 grammatical patterns of instructional sentences from these materials. Using the Japanese Language Proficiency Test as a foundation, the author measured the difficulty of the vocabulary, expressions, and grammatical patterns. The author found that there are some vocabulary, expressions, and grammatical patterns in these materials that are difficult for Japanese learners to understand. The results of this study will contribute to the creation of Japanese disaster information.

In case of disaster, an inappropriate designed sign for evacuation guidance can lead to make human damage greater. According to the preceding study, some evacuation sign in use for the indication of an evacuation route or a type of an evacuation site are not only hard to be understood exactly, but also apt to be understood quite the opposite. Furthermore, the preceding study also mentioned that an appropriate evacuation guidance sign should have both an elaborated symbol for a hazard and a refined symbol for an awakening to a smooth evacuation. However, as the preceding study was based on a questionnaire survey targeting merely university students, further research had been needed in order to confirm how much general scope these arguments have.

In this paper, we verified again the above arguments which has been pointed out by the preceding study, based on two sets of new data collected through internet questionnaire surveys targeting common people in Japan and the United States. The results of the verification generally support the most part of the above arguments. Accordingly, we may conclude as a minimum suggestion that the design of the “simple person” should be permitted, without elements such as the design of “circle” or “building” which could be obstructive to smooth evacuation.

The success and failure of initial responses to disaster is extremely important to mitigate the damages. A disaster-information-sharing is essential to choose and carry out appropriate responses when time and resources are severely limited. So, it is necessary to develop an information-collecting-and-sharing system and a social system where information is mutually exchanged.

This study developed a system for local communities to collaborate in collecting and sharing information. The system can realize the continuity between normal and disaster, interactivity of information, immediacy, and cross-sectoral operation. Also, the system was utilized in a variety of cases where situations and subjects were different, and the result was analyzed. As the result, knowledge was obtained on the requirements and the necessary frameworks for local communities to utilize the information-sharing system. Other systems similar to this study have been developed, and the advancement of technology is expected to spread more sophisticated systems in the future. This study conducted a practice with technologies which can be spread at this time and organized knowledge to implement the same type of system in the community, which are the features of this study.

Japanese society was heavily damaged by Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. At the same time, public transportation systems were also heavily harmed. Although other public transportation systems, like railways and aviation, required several months for the restoration, local bus routes were restored at the very beginning. The reasons and their stories of post disaster restoration of local bus were investigated in this study. We interviewed person responsible for local bus, such as local bus staff, staff of local governments. The primarily aim of this study is to summarize and record the actions and emotions of people concerned to local bus from soon after the disaster to a month after the disaster. This study focused on the qualitative data to describe the establishment activity of Sendai Airport Limousine, temporary established local bus route. This route was the government led program aimed to connect the Sendai Airport and Sendai central Station.

Since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, it has been required to enhance practical education of disaster mitigation for junior and junior high school students. Moreover, developing and practicing educational tools to educate the diversity of disaster mitigation actions and to promote thinking for issues of disaster mitigation through discussion have been urgent issues. In this study, by means of questionnaire surveys, we aim to evaluate the utility of the “Disaster Mitigation Action Card Game” which is a new educational tool on disaster mitigation for children and students to promote the game players' thinking through discussion. In order to practice the game and conduct questionnaire in each class of junior and junior high schools (40∼50 minutes), we used a simple questionnaire sheet in the surveys. From the results of the surveys at junior and junior high schools in Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures, the “Disaster Mitigation Action Card Game” can be well utilized as an enjoyable educational tool of disaster mitigation for junior and junior high school students regardless of their ages, sex, living areas, and experience of studying disaster mitigation. Furthermore, at least for students in more than fifth grades of junior schools, it is also suggested that the game can promote their understanding of the diversity of disaster mitigation actions and their thinking for the issues of the disaster mitigation through discussion.

Disaster risk in rural areas in Asian countries has been increasing and large number of people are still expected to live there in the future. Although local administrations are encouraged to tackle disaster risk reduction, a practical framework of disaster information dissemination, one of the most important nonstructural countermeasures, is hard to be developed due to lack of resources and experiences in the administrations. Therefore, introductions of lessens learnt from other areas' past disaster countermeasures to the local administrations would be useful resources to sophisticate their current information dissemination frameworks. In this research, we focused Japanese case study applying the idea for Thai local administrations in rural mountainous areas from a view point of information management and role-sharing among related organizations. Here we show current problems of target administrations in disaster information dissemination clarified by comparing with the Japanese case. Theses are insufficient evacuation promotion by districts, and lack of sharing observation / forecasting data and warning information among related agencies. We proposed an ideal information dissemination framework for the Thai local administration which shall be able to overcome the problems.

Hazard Map (HM) is one of the non-structural measures for the disaster prevention. It is developed for various Disasters. In addition, there were a lot of previous studies about HM. And it was pointed out in these studies that there are few residents who read HM.

However, most of them studied for residents who read HM. Therefore, there is little knowledge about actual reference and keeping states conditions of HM of residents. In this paper, we grasp the actual reference and keeping states conditions of HM of residents. And we suggest the standard about the ratio of residents who read and keep HM.

We carried out meta analysis about the actual reference and keeping states conditions of HM using data of plural surveys. As a result, we clarified a correlative between a personal attribute and HM reference condition. The ratio of residents who read HM for elderly people is higher than it for young people. Then, we performed the multiple regression analysis to analyze the influence that factors of “Local characteristic” and factors of “Survey” gave in HM reference condition. In this analysis, we use the ratio residents who are under 49 years old as factor of “Local characteristics”, and the “Term” and “Response rate” as factors of “Survey”. “Term” means the term from the date when HM was published to the date when the survey was carried out. “Response rate” means the response rate of survey which was carried out to investigate actual reference states conditions of HM. As the result of analysis, we clarified relations that the ratio of residents who did not read HM was low at the long “term” region and the high “response rate” region.

After the Great East Japan Earthquake, construction of tsunami evacuation facilities is successive. The purpose of this study is to grasp the relation between the consciousness about evacuation to resident's tsunami evacuation facilities and the intention of tsunami evacuation.

An investigation object area is 2. It is Shingu-shi, Wakayama and 6 prefectures where Nankai-trough disastrous earthquake is assumed. As a result, the person who is considering injured danger while taking refuge and isn't considering necessity from which I take evacuation in the higher place (nidonige) chooses tsunami evacuation tower and building was grasped. And also while taking refuge, the old generation is considering injured danger. And the necessity from I take evacuation in the higher place is being considered in the young generation. Therefore it's necessary to make the dissemination of information the individual genus gender.

In the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, seismic intensity 7 was recorded twice and a lot of affected residents were evacuated due to not only structural damages to their houses but also active seismic activity. Refugees are not being in the designated shelters such as stay in a vehicle has become one of big problems. We survey the change of the trend before and after the foreshock and main shock using mobile special statistics to grasp evacuation behaviors in wide area beyond the area of municipalities in the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake.

At the result, number of refugees who evacuated beyond the area of single municipality is shown at least around 78 thousand on 4AM to 5AM, 17th April, next day of the occurrence of the main shock. Number of refugees who lives in Mashiki town which recorded seismic intensity 7 twice and had severe damage, and evacuated beyond the town, is shown at least 4.6 thousand on 4AM to 5AM, 16th April, the day of the occurrence of the main shock.