This paper aims to reveal that the people who are affected by present bias have a particular view of disaster revitalization in four prefecture of capital area, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba. Present bias is the one of cognitive bias and leads hyperbolic discounting. Former researches said that the people who are affected this bias show low of planning ability, low of adaptability for changing circumstance, the principle of living only for the moment and they demand quick recover for disaster revitalization stronger than others do.

The author had a quantitative survey to verify it. The author did the survey through internet for four hundred residents who live in four prefecture of capital area, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, in January 2018. Research participants were separated two groups as “Present bias group” and “Control group” by screening survey. Each group were consisted by two hundred research participants.

The result show that two groups have significant difference in one point as “Quickness of Disaster Recovery”. This result suggests that the responses of “Present bias group” is based on “Self Responsibility Theory” which has been spreading rapidly in recent years and their responses can be interpreted as a self-defense measure against it.

We conducted a case study to investigate how earthquake-prediction related information was issued under the operational Tokai earthquake prediction program in Japan. On April 8th, 2003, an unusual volumetric strain change was observed at one of the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)'s borehole strainmeter stations deployed in the Tokai region, which could be a precursor of the impending Tokai earthquake. Next day, JMA issued earthquake prediction related information, announcing that the ongoing strain change had no direct relevance to the Tokai earthquake. We revealed the evaluation and announcement processes for this event based on JMA's internal technical documents and interviews with the JMA officer in charge, and discussed the implications for issuing the Nankai trough earthquake information which was implemented in 2017.

This study proposes disaster reduction education should be implemented and evaluated from a long-term perspective rather than a short-term and one-shot type of study. From this point of view, a conventional view on a goal of disaster education, i.e., capacity building of students for protecting their own lives by themselves, should be also taken into careful reconsideration. Since we have scarce chances to check this, which is an actual disaster, researches are more likely to rely too much on students' subjective reports and responses on a questionnaire within a short-sighted pre- and post-test paradigm. However, this type of evaluations is not necessarily adequate, due to some limitations. This paper proposes, based on a 10 years long action research conducted in a small school, more desirable methods for evaluating the impact of school disaster education; checking positive impacts on hardware or software countermeasures taken in a community, and tracking long-term carrier developments of both teachers and students after they left or graduated a school.

In recent years, flood damage has been frequently every year, and, in particular, there have been a lot of human damage caused by the delay of escape. In this research, in order to contribute to effective and efficient disaster prevention and mitigation activities by residents and municipality officers in charge of disaster management, we have developed a "flood disaster VR experience application" in which the situation of flood time is expressed using virtual reality (VR) technology that has made remarkable progress in recent years. And it was verified by a questionnaire whether the residents' awareness about the flood and their intentions for disaster mitigation activities change by experiencing the app.

As a result, it was shown that a group who had not experienced flood disasters felt that the flood came actually in the simulated flood using the app, and that they were more afraid of the flood comparing with other groups. And the group who had not experienced flood disasters increased their concern for flood disasters after experiencing the simulated flood using this app. In addition, it was shown that the group that increased the level of concern for flood disaster after the simulated flood had a higher intention to view a flood hazard map.

From these results, it was shown that the flood disaster VR experience was particularly effective for those who don't have flood experience and may greatly contribute to effective disaster prevention awareness and disaster prevention action intention.

In recent water-related disasters, how to promote residents' responses by themselves is issued. Moreover, disaster information should support the responses, but couldn't work enough. In this study, we had a practical trial of construction of “Disaster Response Switch (DRSwitch)” with a volunteer disaster prevention organization in the Kawamo district of Takarazuka City in Hyogo, Japan in 2018.

As a method of the construction, 5 workshops in total were conducted and an online resource was served for people in the community to be able to check disaster information in daily life. The residents discussed concrete responses and their timing, and connected local situations and disaster information into disaster responses. As a result, they created two switches: one switch for beginning their disaster response activities and another for beginning evacuations in the community. From these switches, some characteristics on judgement standards were found. On the other hand, some issues were found such as need of support of professionals or local government to relate local situations to disaster information in some switches. In addition, they need to share their DRSwitches with other residents in the community for practical use of them in future.

‘Tsunami Tendenko’ has been recently promoted as a principle of tsunami evacuation in Japan. However, ‘tsunami tendenko’ may cause psychological conflict such as “I could not go to help anybody though I could do so” or “I have come to help somebody though I should have evacuated alone”. This paper calls such a psychological emotion as ‘regret’ and claims that we should investigate critical issues and develop evacuation plan not only for minimizing the number of fatalities but also reducing the number of people who feels regret. Bases on the background mentioned above, we propose ‘regret map’ which provides information to support investigating problems concerning the practical evaluation plan in each field with unique local features such as ‘under which social conditions the area where residents faces regret would be larger’ or ‘how such an area can be reduced’. In addition, we show application cases to demonstrate how regret map brings implication in developing actual evacuation plans.

We aimed to establish an environment for providing disaster prevention information to travelers traveling by car. A prototype system providing evacuation information via a car navigation system. The system acquires evacuation order from the disaster information sharing infrastructure and displays the dangerous area on the map.

Forty-one monitors tried the system to receive tsunami and heavy rain information and evaluated its effectiveness. Displaying dangerous areas on a map has led to the driver's action to avoid disasters. In addition, those who were not familiar with the area tended to flee to distant places. As a result, the provision of disaster prevention information through car navigation was generally evaluated to be effective. And, it is desirable to advise the driver on how to action after receiving information in order to improve the safety of the driver and the local population.

When a disaster happens, teachers are responsible for keeping children's safety, and children's lives must not be lost by human factors such as teachers' lack of knowledge on disaster prevention and the inadequate dissemination of disaster manuals. In this study, we conducted a "Questionnaire Survey on School Disaster Prevention" for the elementary and junior high schools, and the municipal Boards of Education in order to grasp the effort and situation on disaster prevention in the educational institutes. As a result, many managers and chiefs for disaster prevention are concerned whether their disaster manuals are adequate or not, and that the manuals are not well known to all staff members. The survey also highlighted the lack of mutual interaction between schools and the Boards of Education, and we concluded that these factors were the barriers for effectively managing and operating the disaster manuals and disaster education. In order to make the management and operation of the school disaster manuals sustainable and effective, it is necessary to strengthen cooperation and maintain mutual interaction between the schools and other related organizations such as the Board of Education. Furthermore, it is questionable whether research on disaster prevention and education has been fully utilized in schools and the Boards of Education. In order to solve these issues, it is essential to establish a system effectively and efficiently managing disaster manuals, as well as systematically educating teachers and developing advisory personnel at the Board of Education.

Japan Meteorological Agency began the operation of "information relating to the Nankai Trough Earthquake" from November 1, 2017. However, although this operation has been started, local governments, private business operators and residents were not determined how they would effectively utilize the information. Accordingly, we conducted a survey in Shizuoka Prefecture and Kochi Prefecture about how people intent to evacuate after this information has been announced.

As a result, first, "information relating to the Nankai Trough Earthquake" is known to half the people, but they are regarded as difficult to make decision about evacuation even after this information is announced. Second, if the "information relating to the Nankai Trough Earthquake (EXTRA information)" has been announced, depending on the presence or absence of information from the Japan Meteorological Agency and local governments, people's intent to evacuate will change. In addition, the psychological cost from the anxiety about staying in shelters or leaving home and the economic cost from the anxiety about protect.

Japan has entered the phase of population decline with a peak in 2008. Therefore, attracting population living in areas with a high risk of natural hazards to areas with low risk of such hazards and forming high-quality housing stock are crucial. This paper aims to assess the population exposed to flood hazards in Japan and its prefectures and to discuss the change in population from 1995 to 2015 and its features.

Areas included in the analysis are all 47 prefectures in Japan, and data used were acquired from the National Census with the Fourth Mesh (approximately 500-m grid) and the National Land Numerical Information provided by government agencies respectively. The analysis results obtained using Geographic Information System reveal that in Japan, the overall population and number of households within the estimated flood inundation area have been steadily increasing since 1995. Moreover, 30 prefectures exhibit an increase in population, whereas an increase in the number of households has been observed in all 47 prefectures from 1995 to 2015. The overall increase in the number of households, including the areas with a declining population, indicates that residential land use in flood-risk areas has been developed.