Under the revised Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act in 2021, it became the obligation of municipalities to create individual evacuation plans for those who require assistance.

This study aimed to support mutual assistance evacuation efforts led by voluntary disaster prevention organizations by developing an information sharing application. The developed Application was tested during an actual evacuation drill with 50 members of voluntary disaster prevention organizations using it. After the drill, 30 of the 50 users of the application responded to a survey.

Based on the survey results, several key points emerged regarding the impact of using the application during evacuation drills: (1) The application increased user’s awareness of “mutual assistance”. (2) The elevated awareness of mutual assistance was attributed to the effectiveness of mutual monitoring and an enhanced sense of responsibility driven by self-awareness of their roles. (3) Users expressed a heightened willingness to voluntarily create and update lists of individuals in need of assistance. Furthermore, nearly all respondents expressed a desire to continue using this application for future training exercises. On the other hand, user identified a challenge for the application, which is the implementation of functions that can be used in everyday life.

It is well known that the generation of odor is one of the premonitory phenomena of landslide disasters, but the premonitory mechanism has not been fully elucidated. To find the source of odors, we investigated pore air odors at depths of 0 to 3 m on multiple natural slopes, and observed high odor intensity. During heavy rains, pore air in the soil is released to the surface due to the infiltration of rainfall from above into the ground and the supply of groundwater from the lower layer to the upper layer. If the pore air has a strong odor, it is conceivable that this release will generate the odor on the ground surface and be a precursor of landslide disasters. In order to examine this possibility, we made a model ground mixed with odorants, and conducted a water supply experiment from the bottom and a rainfall infiltration experiment while measuring the odor on the ground surface. In both experiments, there was little increase in odor intensity on the ground surface during the process of pore air being released to the ground surface, however when the groundwater level rose near the ground surface, the odor intensity increased rapidly. If these were to take place on an actual scale of ground, the occurrence of odors at the ground surface would be associated with critical slope conditions due to the rise of groundwater. On the other hand, considering that many actual slopes will fail before the groundwater level reaches near the ground surface, the experimental results may show that the occurrence of odors is unlikely to be a precursor. Further investigation is required to determine whether there is a link between the occurrence of odors and groundwater rise.

This research clarifies the significance of the concept of forgiveness in places of remembrance as a space for the inheritance of disasters. Aplace of remembrance is a space where a variety of memory media are arranged, which guarantees the diversity of memories, but also risks the core institution controlling the meaning of the memories. Therefore, it is important that a place of remembrance is a space open to the public and prevents convergence on a single narrative. Forgiveness is a recursive self-determination of how to relate to events, which allows the subject to bear responsibility, but also permitting relief from excessive obligation. This has the potential to ease psychological barriers to acceptance of suffering towards healing in the sense of discovering how to face suffering within the individual. This makes a place of remembrance an open space where people with diverse objectives, such as commemoration and inheritance, can come and go under their responsibility and increases the possibility of creating communication in the sense of a connection of actions.

In 2019, the Japanese government revised the Basic Plan to Promote Nankai Trough Earthquake Measures by adding a special alerting component. Local governments in the Nankai region are now formulating plans to respond to “Nankai Trough Earthquake Extra Information” meaning that seismic activity has increased the short-term probability of a large possibly tsunami-genic earthquake. In this study, we will reveal the current status of local governments planning. We conducted a survey of all municipalities designated as high hazard areas (29 prefectures and 707 municipalities) asking whether they have response plans and their contents. The results showed that the response plans varied from municipality to municipality in terms of numbers of response actions included in the plan, and that items related to evacuation tended to be included more in municipalities in the designated tsunami high hazard areas, and that the setting of “proactive evacuation area” was devised in accordance with regional characteristics such as lowland area or mountainous area etc. In addition, municipalities in the designated tsunami high hazard areas tend to issue "evacuation of vulnerable people" only in the case of either the Nankai Trough Earthquake Extra Information (Megathrust Earthquake Alert; also translated as Major Earthquake Warning) or the Nankai Trough Earthquake Extra Information (Megathrust Earthquake Attention; also translated as Major Earthquake Advisory). These findings on the diversity of response plans are important for increasing visibility and transparency and reducing uncertainty in people’s expectations of local government response actions. Since some people may view the diversity of response actions as disorder and lack of a uniform response, the national government and mass media should play a role in publicizing that the diversity must be seen as reflecting the diverse conditions and unique issues that prevail at the local level.

This study aims to develop AR content that handles a large area as an educational tool for disaster education, which has not been developed in previous studies. Next, evaluation experiments will be conducted. The objective is to clarify the impact of the simulated experience of coping with disaster risk in the real world through AR provided by the developed content on the understanding of the content of disaster risk. This is due to the issue of normalcy bias, the possibility of developing disaster education tools using xR technology, and the need to examine a simplified development process for urban 3D map services in local areas.

In this study, based on the findings organized on xR technology and previous research, AR application development and its evaluation experiments suggested the possibility of developing AR content that handles large areas and the usefulness of the developed application, such as its effectiveness in correcting normalcy bias. As a future prospect, although verification of the effectiveness of the application on a larger number of subjects is necessary and stable operation is an issue, the possibility of utilizing the application for evacuation behavior analysis and the possibility of providing a simulated evacuation experience that is as close to reality as possible using an immersive AR device are expected.

This study examines the transition of the support system for disaster-stricken municipalities surrounded by nonstricken municipalities, prefectures, and national government agencies, by dividing the period from the end of World War II to the present into four periods, and looks ahead to the future. The four periods can be understood as the "period of ambiguous and fragments," the "period of foundation with underlying problems," the "period of enhancement and development," and the "period of reinforcement and unfolding" based on the characteristics of each period. From the viewpoint of information transmission in inter-organizational networks, it was thought that the four strategies of "presenting common norms," "connecting," "setting domains," and "approaching" were used to optimize the networks. The above four strategies alone are insufficient, this study also pointed out the possibility of new strategies of "segmentation" and "close contact" in the event of a wide-area catastrophic disaster in which multiple prefectures are simultaneously affected or a localized catastrophic disaster that paralyzes most of the functions of municipalities, which could occur in the future.

In this study, we developed "Tsunami Evacuation VR" to enhance tsunami disaster preparedness. Collaborating with local students, we captured 136 locations, recreated them in VR, and added obstacles such as collapsed walls. 100 students experienced the VR during regular classes for 50 minutes. Questionnaires revealed improved awareness of earthquake situations and specific tsunami evacuation measures. Follow-up interviews after several ten days confirmed students taking actions like securing furniture and walking evacuation routes.

Recent technological innovations have enhanced local observations that provide highly localized information in disaster situation. This paper examines the Shirutanigawa Project, an initiative to use the Flood Crisis Management Water Level Gauge in the Shirutanigawa river watershed using the Transtheoretical Model (TTM). The project implemented community and individual initiatives to evaluate the provision of local observation data to the community and examine effective ways to provide for the community based on differences in the initiatives. The results of the TTM showed a correlation between stage of transformation, decisional balance, and self-efficacy. Moreover, it showed commonalities with results in other fields, making the TTM applicable to provide local observation data to the community. Additionally, results revealed local observation data usage widens as participation in each initiative increases and the highest volume of data was gathered when both community and individual initiatives were present. Therefore, we conclude that an effective way to provide local observation data to improve community crisis awareness and behavior is by establishing a system the involves, first, observation of local participation using local observation data; second, participants’ confirmation of the observed information; and third, sharing of information within the community.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate significant cognitive factors in coping response decision-making in natural disasters and to clarify disaster information which is related to those cognitive factors. For these purposes, first, we overviewed the theory of evacuation decision-making held in natural disaster research and of fear-arousing communications. By this approach, we clarified cognitive factors that are related to coping response decision-making. Second, we surveyed the disaster areas, Rokkaku River Flood in 2021 in Saga prefecture and Kakehashi River Flood in 2022 in Ishikawa prefecture. After these surveys, we try to demonstrate the research questions by analyzing the results of our survey researches.

According to analysis, the cognitive factor related to coping response decision-making is “the expectancy of being exposed to the threat” which is used in fear arousing communication. On the other hand, disaster information facilitating the expectancy of being exposed to the threat tells “the proximity of disaster”, and this cognitive factor is used in evacuation decision-making in natural disasters. By the above, we indicate the relation of the cognitive factors and disaster information to coping response decision-making.

In recent years, the frequency of short-term heavy rainfall has been increasing due to the impacts of climate change. As one of the climate change adaptation, it is important to deepen our understanding of such a heavy rainfall and need to change our behavior.

In this study, we conducted a survey to investigate the response behaviors of students who participated in an initiative utilizing heavy rainfall-related information in daily life in two junior high schools in Uji City, Kyoto Prefecture, from July to September 2022. During the initiative, they actively engaged in observing and reporting instances of short-term heavy rainfall. Throughout the period, resulting in a total of 169 reports were recorded.

According to the survey results conducted before and after the initiative, 66% of the students expressed their intention to continue using XRAIN, while 73% of the students stated that they had thought about climate change through the initiative. From these results, it can be inferred that the utilization of heavy rainfall-related information can effectively promote response actions to heavy rainfall and enhance awareness of climate change adaptation. It leads to reducing the impacts and damages associated with intensified heavy rainfall events in the future.

In this study, a prototype web application was developed to solve the current problem of utilizing disaster riskinformation in real estate transactions (i.e., not knowing the damage to residential properties and need for evacuation,the evacuation sites and routes, and the cost of disaster recovery), with the aim of establishing a mechanism to supportresidential property selection and preparedness in consideration of disaster risk.

Using the prototype application, we calculated damage, evacuation needs, evacuation sites and routes, andrecovery costs, and showed it to real estate agents and consumers, and conducted interviews. As a result, opinionswere obtained that the availability of disaster risk information not found in existing hazard maps may lead to actionssuch as selecting land with lower disaster risk, considering building damage mitigation and evacuation, andconsidering post-disaster recovery and insurance coverage. The survey also obtained opinions that future issuesrequire improved clarity, the use of local information, and know-how on how to avoid risks and take action after adisaster.

This paper identifies two characteristics expected of evacuation information. Residents make decisions necessary for evacuation from various information sources. Past studies have shown that not only evacuation information released by municipalities, but also calls for evacuation are very effective in triggering evacuation. We investigated the characteristics of information required by municipalities, which are the entities that issue evacuation information,and fire departments, which are the organizations that call for evacuation. The results suggest that the characteristics of the information required differ depending on the organization.

First, municipalities were considered to require "accurate" information such as comprehensive and immediate information based on scientific, objective, and quantitative information to grasp the situation from a bird's eye view in order to issue evacuation information.

Second, firefighters were considered to be seeking "persuasiveness" information such as individual, specific,visual, figurative, and descriptive information in their "call for action" while also using it to make judgments based on their experience.

Third, municipalities and fire departments have a common goal of evacuating residents. For firefighters who call for evacuation, this is the activity goal itself, but for municipalities, the goal of issuing evacuation information exists before that. It was suggested that this difference in activity goals may be a factor related to differences in the characteristics of evacuation information.