In 2004 ten typhoons strucked Japan in addition to heavy rains, and brought severe dameges. Mass-media critisized slow responses of local authorities, specially failure of transmission of evacuation advice and order.

This paper put focus on analysis of actual cases of flood disaster, and makes clear the common pattern of process of flood disaster consisted of 6 stages. It is also revealed the condition for realizing speedy evacuation in early flood stage, including prompt decision of issuing evacuation advice and order, transmitting persuative message through adequate combination of communication media and improving evacuation roads and shelters. Special emphasis is on the importance for local residents to accept calling evacuation by local authorities.

The purpose of this study is to investigate effect of representation on hazard map reading. Participants of 61 junior high school students and 46 university students were given a test version of hazard map of Mt. Fuji and asked to answer what they should do assuming they were residents of hazard area with reference to the hazard map. In study 1, comparison between hazard map on PC and printed map, and between hazard information with maps and without maps were conducted. As results, both junior high school and university students could not fully use map information although maps increased interest to hazard information. The junior high school students evaluated PC map more than printed map but the university students evaluated printed map more. In study 2, normal map and Bird's-eye view map were compared by 64 junior high school students and 31 university students. Better impression was given to the bird's eye view but there was no actual effect for map reading. Problem of current hazard maps format and how to improve them were discussed.

Many heavy rainfall disasters happened in Japan on 2003 and 2004. Aspects and lessons from disasters were reported by newspaper and other medias. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of information of these heavy rainfall disasters for municipality officer for disaster prevention based on mail questionnaire survey. Questionnaires were sent to 737 municipalities in November 2004, as a result the survey has produced responses from 364 municipalities. We may say that the interest in heavy rainfall disaster for municipality disaster prevention officers was raised by frequency of heavy rainfall disasters. For instance, 35% of respondents answered "The frequency of browsing of the Yahoo! Weather, the most popular meteorological information site, was increased after the heavy rainfall disasters in 2004". Then the percentage of respondents of "An evacuation order of heavy rainfall disaster may be announced from our office" was increased 10%. However, the interest was not connected with concrete measures. The main reasons are as follows: (1) Before the disasters, 39% of municipalities didn't considered inundation by flood on the occasion of decision about location of public shelters, after the disasters, municipalities which revised the location of shelter were only 12% of those. (2) The heavy rainfall disaster on Minamata city in July 2003 happened midnight of holiday. Minamata city office took many lessons from the disaster, and these lessons were reported by major medias severely. Minamata city improved several problems based on the lesson, however there were few municipalities which did the similar improvement. 15% of respondent had experience of systematic training course about disaster prevention. On the other hand, 21% of respondent were not educated about disaster prevention. There is a limit in the measure for disaster prevention by local municipality individually. It is important that the systematization based on lessons of disasters by national government.

Summary: In September 2003, Yoshio Kushida, leader of the Yatsugatake south base observatory, published information on earthquake prediction that used observation of VHF scattering waves, which was called Kushida's method. In order to investigate how citizens perceived this information and what actions they took, a questionnaire was published on the WWW, to which a wide range of people were asked to respond. Though the respondents were limited to Internet users, we were able to verify that Kushida's information induced citizens to take preparatory action to prevent disasters. Some characteristics of their actions also became clear including the fact that, compared with other age groups, senior citizens had a decreased desire to prevent toppling of furniture, which is considered a primary damage prevention. In addition, regarding attitudes towards Kushida's information, in the case of both men and women such as housewives, the older they were, the more confidence they had in the information, and their attitude was tied to preparatory action to prevent disasters, and it was easier to trust information reported on television than that from word-of-mouth or Internet bulletin boards. These findings agreed with previous findings. In addition, we were not able to verify any social confusion resulting from Kushida's information such as an increase in calls to the government to verify information, suggesting the possibility that this information stimulated risk communication based on the principle of prevention. With the spread of the Internet, much more information is available to citizens. They are able to verify the precision of Kushida's information by procuring and comparing a variety of information. Perhaps it is necessary for the government to break away from its view of citizens that assumes that enlightenment of citizens with poor scientific literacy is necessary, keeping in mind the standardized flow of information from public institutions to the media and then to citizens.

In order to examine the actual situations of communications and information system in disaster medicine, the nationwide questionnaire survey of fire departments and interview survey of several advanced disaster prevention agencies (Tokyo Fire Department, Amagasaki Municipal Fire Department, Fukuoka Fire Prevention Bureau) were carried out.

According to the survey the following points were found.

1) Communication tool for transportation between rescue crew and medical institutions depends excessively on vulnerable fixed telephone service and cellular.

2) A hearing investigation of actual emergency medicine also have revealed that the emergency service officials have a tendency to depend excessively on vulnerable telephone network (fixed telephone service [FTS] and cellular).

3) The Wide-Area Disaster and Emergency Medical Information Systems by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and prefectural governments have not been fully exploited. There is a negative spiral between fire department and hospital.

4) To solve these problems, the following point are important ① to use invulnerable communication media, ② to make plan in case of disruption in communication, ③ to exploit the Information Systems in normal situation.