This paper aims to show the crime occurrence factors based on the theory of “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)” from a microscale environmental characteristics point of view. While macroscale environmental factors of crime occurrence have been the primary concern of existing research, sufficient discussion of microscale environmental factors has not been carried out yet. In this study, the authors obtained microscale environmental characteristic information through a detailed investigation of the case study areas in Itabashi ward, Tokyo.The correlation between the risk of bag snatching and microscale environmental characteristic is clarified through statistical analysis. Based on the results, the importance of keeping natural surveillance is proposed.

Recently, it is advocated to introduce the idea of the performance based codes into fire zoning. As for the urban safety level of quasi-fire-zone where a great deal of damage of post-earthquake fire is expected, it is very important to discuss the safety level of post-earthquake fire from performance specifications point of view. In this paper, the authors developed the simulation model for people's wide area evacuation in case of post-earthquake fire, and conducted estimation of suffred number of evacuee who lost their way to escape from the fires. Applying the model to urban improvement, the authors discussed the desirable safety level of fire spread speed and fire breakout probability from acceptable suffered risk of wide area evacuation point of view.

In the time of disasters, construction companies' roles of disaster recovery are indispensable in each region. Local governments that are responsible for disaster relief have been depending on these roles. However, the amount of construction investment has been decreasing in Japan, and the business environment of construction firms has changed to be very severe. Authors have executed a questionnaire survey to the prefectural governments and ordinance-designated city governments to examine actual situations, expectation and supportive measures of disaster recovery cooperation with local construction companies. Those governments have recognized the importance of continuous existence of the companies in their regions, but their supportive measures should be more enhanced.

The Wenchuan earthquake with M8.0 had occurred in the north-western part of Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008, so Sichuan Province had suffered physical and economic damage seriously. In this study we focus on Dujiangyan City, where a few of World Cultural Heritages stand and gather eight million tourists (in 2007). We estimate economic damage of the tourism sector. Based on field surveys in 2008 and 2009, and questionnaires for both of business offices and tourist visitors in 2009 as well as the regional Input-Output Table in 2007, we calculate the amount of damage as 3.34 billion yuan directly within the city and 10 billion yuan in total of Sichuan Province.

Small open spaces are provided to improve the problems of densely built-up districts by many local authorities. However, the city fire prevention performance of them has not quantitatively become clear. In this study, we attempted to make it clear in six densely built-up areas have different fire prevention performance by using the city fire simulation. In result, we got some new knowledge as follows; Burned area ratio is not decreased by few small open spaces in low fire prevention performance area, a strong wind decrease burned area ratio without depending on the city fire prevention performance, and so on.

Earthquake Loss estimation is essential for effective earthquake disaster prevention planning, countermeasures and activities especially in urban area. In China, the estimation was started in 1997 and has been propagated in 2000's. The purpose of this study is to clarify the history and the present situation concerning loss estimation in China through a hearing investigation for government officer in charge and review and to analysis on the present problem. We discuss some suggestion for its improvement and development from the various viewpoints such as social, technical and institutional. We selected Wulumuqi city in Xingjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as a specific case, because has the richest experiences of loss estimation in China.

In affected areas by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake disaster, many new dwelling houses have been constructed by the private and public sectors in the 10 years since, as a result of the effective implementation of the rebuilt home assist of disaster victims. This paper clarified the relationship between urban recovery process and housing rebuilt activity by analyzing the urban transformation after the disaster. The result pointed of the possibility of the geographical patterns about regional housing damages and the affective of the providing mass housing for recovery process by the cluster analysis using national census data.

We clarified the generalization of the behaviors and the life reconstruction processes of disaster victims suffered from the Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) Earthquake in 1995, the Mid Niigata Prefecture Earthquake in 2004 and the Niigataken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake in 2007 through the analysis of the data from the social random sampled surveys. We found the generalizations in many aspects about 1) changes in the dwelling places of the victims, 2) personal and emotional support, material and financial assistance, or assistance in receiving vital information, 3) long-term recovery and life reconstruction process, 4) responsibilities among individuals, communities, and governments for mitigation or preparedness.

The rate of earthquake resistant of water facilities is said to be lower, concretely speaking, about 12% for distribution pipes main on average in Japan. So it's getting more important to decide the level of resistant against earthquake. In this study we did questionnaires to the citizens showing the relationship between the cost of replacing old pipes and the risk of water suspension from a view of risk communication. The results of analyses show that maximum permissible limit for water suspension is about 2 to 3 days and willingness to pay for enhancing earthquake resistant is about 400 to 800 higher than it already is. But with the willingness, it is impossible to fulfill their permissible limit, so risk communication such as CAUSE model is necessary.

This paper clarifies disaster response and recovery strategies from long term flooding damage after possible Nankai Earthquake Disaster from case studies in Kochi city. Japan has vulnerability suffering from long term flooding because many cities locate in area of below sea level. Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka have large below sea level area. Because of climate change, risk of flooding in those areas is becoming higher. In addition to climate change, M8 class earthquake cause land subsidence for fault displacement. Kochi is likely to suffer from that impact for M8 class earthquake called Nankai Earthquake, which might occur with 60% possibility within 30 years. Issues on disaster response and a strategic time line for recovery are clarified based on the analysis on recovery process of historic events, and stakeholder workshop in Kochi.

The prior traffic restriction of the road can be executed before the rainfall disaster. However, there were few persons and cars rolled in the sediment disaster when the execution of the prior traffic restriction was delayed. On the other hand, it is expected to execute the release of the traffic restriction as soon as possible if the fear of the sediment disaster becomes small. When patrol is executed, and safety is confirmed, Ishikawa Prefecture executes release of the restriction after raining finishes and three hours pass. The present study considers the method of executing the prior traffic restriction of the road and releasing it using the road disaster prevention check data and the time history of the rainfall intensity.

It is one of the ironclad rules of risk management that we take multiple countermeasures for reducing human casualties in dwellings attacked by hazardous earthquakes. Add to the diagnostic system enable to assist a safety arrangement of furniture, which is classified into the pre-earthquake countermeasures, we propose a seismic alert system recognizing automatically the indoor risky space with computer vision as an application of the earthquake early warning. This system has the function capable of automatically recognizing the dangerous floor plan out of indoor spaces by applying the one-point perspective projection and safely guiding by artificial voice the inhabitants stayed in the dangerous spaces in an emergency case of getting the earthquake early warning information.

This study aims to evaluate road safety conditions and occurrence rate of traffic accidents for bicycle riders. Geographic distribution of bicycle traffic accidents are plotted in a map of Ube city, number of students commuting by bicycles are investigated and traffic survey data was referred for number of bicycle riders. Occurrence rate of bicycle accidents is defined as number of bicycle accidents in a buffer zone of 500m divided by the number of bicycles traveling in a survey point. Occurrence rate of bicycle accidents tends to be higher along wider and straight streets than that along narrower and winding streets.

The approach of disaster response and relief efforts has been changing with evolutional development of web-based geospatial technologies. The purpose of this article is to examine how disaster response and relief efforts have been changing along with recent geospatial technological development, mainly from Haiti earthquake response in 2010. This paper outlines how conventional GIS disaster responses by governmental agencies and relief response organizations and the way of geospatial data sharing have been innovatively transforming into more dynamic, opener, and more decentralized way with a wider range of participation. Finally, the paper discusses lessons learned from recent responses and some thoughts for future development.

Due to the urbanization phenomena we have been facing a new issue to early resolve, that is, a problem on stranded commuters. In this paper, we discuss municipalities' countermeasures for stranded commuters in Nagoya city which is the third largest megacity in Japan. Based on the national census of the population and the person trip survey data, we estimated 665,000 persons as the number of stranded commuters in a weekday. In addition we carried out a questionnaire survey targeted to business companies surrounding Nagoya Station on the cooperating policies for giving relief to stranded commuters. As the result their emergency evacuation resources are not enough by any means, but we are certain of reliability of their cooperation with the municipality measures.

It is necessary that the evacuation centers are managed by refugees in future disasters, especially in the slightly damaged areas, because the most aid power of public secter are carried into the more heavily damaged areas for management of evaciation centers. In the Niigataken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake, the local community must cope with various difficulties by themselves in the evacuation period. In the Hisumi area, which is one of the active communities in Kashiwazaki city, we proceeded the interview investigations on both of the leaders of community and the refugees for clarifying the actual response of refugees and the management of the evacuation center in the community in the evacuation period. This study clarified the factors on the possibility of the community-leading management on evacuation centers, and showed the lessons for the preparation against future disasters.

Establishing a national response system for Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) is now on the way in Japan. This paper reports the results of a survey on Disaster City®, a world-renowned comprehensive US&R training facility by TEEX (Texas Engineering Extension Service), and discuss what it suggests for Japan. First, problems in establishing national US&R response system in Japan are listed to draw viewpoints for the survey. Then, the survey is conducted and the results are shown. Discussions are made on perspectives of strategies for building training facility, designs to suit training needs, and ways of operating the facility to make the most of it. Finally, suggestions are made for the future.

Firefighting water pipeline requires seismic safety performance and serviceability after an earthquake. However their periodical maintenance is difficult due to underground installation. This study proposes conventional seismic diagnous chart of the underground pipeline in order to check their seismic safety performance easily. The pipeline network is composed of deformed pipes such as bend, Tee, and several types of fitting as well as straight pipes, and their seismic performance depends on the shape of pipeline. This study analyzes the seismic behavior of pipeline network with comparison of the straight pipelines in terms of the displacements of jointed parts quantitatively. Response due to different types of pipe and other factors is considered as modification coeffifient in the chat.

Public sectors should take advantage of intelligence for evacuation at a disaster. Yet, it is difficult due to unclear needs from residents and insufficient administrative resources. In this study, we collected the emergency calls published by Hofu city during the Chugoku, North Kyushu heavy rainfall in 2009. We found that it is hard for evacuees to predict the landslide. For this issue, we also collected the meteorological data associated with the landslide risk, and made a time-series comparison with the emergency calls. The method is suggested to improve the evacuation.

The open space area is necessary for disaster operation such as evacuation, clean-up, logistics and temporary housing. Tokyo Metropolitan Earthquake will cause enormous damage and have far-reaching consequences. Therefore, local governments have to regulate wide-range cooperation for use of available open space area. In this study, 1) the problem schemes of open space is clarified based on the logistic process of Theory of Constraints, and 2) Geospatial distribution and size of open space area is analyzed quantitatively based on land-use database, 3) the conceptual design of the comprehensive open-space database management system is formulate considering decisionmaking process.

Recently the necessity of the accident prevention has made the numbers of the hospitals increase which investigate and analyze incident reports.There are two ways to describe incidents and accidents; open-ended and precode-choice. It is unusual to analyze precode-choice descriptions while usual to analyze open-ended, for the costs and technical difficulty prevent from analyzing. This study investigates effectiveness for medical risk management of TR as follows: 1) Calculation of both of them to examine the usefulness of the precode-choices, 2) Observation of behaviors of the calculated out-comes which depends on time in some campaigns of the accident prevention to estimate results of campaigns, 3) Support of occupation as selecting of important reports to improve human criteria for selection.

There were so many massive natural disasters in Indonesia for the last decade such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, a large-scale earthquake in Yogyakarta and Central Java Provinces in 2006, and another big earthquake in West Sumatra Province in 2009. In order to cope with these disasters, the Government of Indonesia has been improving not only the physical countermeasures against the disasters, but also the institutional mechanism such as the revision of disaster management law and organization concerned. The governmental transition of disaster management mechanisms in Indonesia among the central and local governments shall be studied in this paper.

Swine-origin influenza (A/H1N1) infection was confirmed around the world in 2009. It is important to understand events in terms of risk management and crisis management for this pandemic influenza. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare estimated the damage before the infection spread and established a pandemic scenario. This information was useful as the worst-case scenario for making decisions in response to similar but different crisis situation. In this paper, we analyze the importance of local government in crisis management from the case study in Kobe City. The purpose of this paper is to make proposals for a strategic response using the scenario as the starting points, then develop a new and more adaptable scenario based on continuous monitoring of situations.

This paper compares the long-term recovery planning processes observed in both Kobe and New Orleans from their respective major disasters according to “Five Ws and One H” principles. These principles were originally identified from the analysis of planning process for the formulation of the 1995 Kobe earthquake long-term recovery plan by Kobe City. As a result, we found some similarities and differences in planning processes for both cities to introduce the important determinants for successful recovery planning process.

In a demographically mature society, more attention is required to address the demographic transition in a context of disaster recovery. This study applied the 1995 Kobe Earthquake and the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu Earthquake to examine the population recovery and the demographic characteristics (sustainable, dependent and marginal) of the affected areas. The result yielded clearly that “sustainable regions” are easier to have better population recovery due to the consistent young emigrants. The “dependent regions” hardly complete the population recovery without public support or private fund. Few dependent regions in mountainous areas might even transfer into marginal regions within the decline in working age population. It concluded that the demographic characteristic can be regarded as an essential factor of social resilience which is intensively associated with disaster recovery.

This study is an investigation of the guideline for the special elderly nursing home to make the business continuity plan. There is little home where bcp is made according to the investigation of the Cabinet Office. The four investigated homes did not make the policy and the concrete measure how to execute the routine work after the large earthquake.We analyzed the business scheme of four homes, and made the staff hearing. Then we made the guideline of the business continuity plan of the special elderly nursing home. The routine work of the special elderly nursing home is almost the same in the whole country. So we think the guideline is very useful. Moreover, we propose the solution of the challenging problem for homes to make the business continuity plan.

The aim of this paper is to clarify the role of experts and citizens for rescuing cultural heritage from severe disaster by reviewing the case study of Chi-chi earthquake in Taiwan. This research shows following 3 points ; 1. The experts make an academic network, and did research for damaged cultural heritage by exchange their experiences. 2. Museum researchers helped local communities' cultural reconstruction besides rescuing their cultural heritage. 3 The armies sometimes remove heritages as garbage not knowing they are cultural heritages.

The collapsed buildings in Kashiwazaki city due to the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-oki earthquake are detected based on aerial photogrammetry using digital aerial images. The digital surface models in the area where severe damage incidents were observed after the earthquake are constructed using the digital aerial images. The pre- and post-event aerial images are employed to develop digital surface models in this study. The differences of building heights between the pre- and post-event 3D models are considered to detect collapsed buildings and the accuracy of the method is discussed.

It is important for citizens to recognize their seismic risk and to take measures to mitigate the damage caused by disasters. In order to examine the citizens' need for accurate and understandable seismic hazard and risk maps, we conducted surveys on our web-site. Based on the results, we developed accurate seismic hazard maps from seismic spectra evaluations using detailed ground models. In addition, fragility curves have been developed with regard to building characteristics. In conclusion, we proposed understandable seismic risk maps by combining these sets of data.

In Japan, “Earthquake Early Warning (EEW)” has been put into operation for first response prior to the arrival of strong motions. However, the uncertainties of the provided information are still in problem for practice of emergency decision making. This study evaluates the error propagation from the estimated seismic source parameters (earthquake magnitude, focal depth and epicenter) to the predicted seismic intensities (PGV and JMA seismic intensities) in an analytical form based on the attenuation law and several conversion formula. Evidence-based approach has been also employed. Probability distributions of realistic seismic intensity conditional on the estimated seismic intensity are modeled on the basis of EEW records actually issued by Japan Meteorological Agency.

A strong earthquake struck the city of Pisco in the coastal region of central Peru on 15 August 2007. In this paper, the authors performed visual damage detection of buildings using images obtained by high-resolution satellite QuickBird. The visual damage interpretation was carried out building by building, comparing the pre-event and postevent images. Then the damage grades of about 10,800 buildings were determined. The results were compared with field survey data and also with the result of visual damage inspection from aerial photographs, and the accuracy of damage inspection was studied. The results show that about 70% of collapsed buildings of the whole city were detected. Some amount of omission error was observed due to the limitation of vertical images.

Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system was originally developed and introduced to control a Shinkansen (bullet train) when earthquake occurs; However, this system has also been introduced to conventional lines and private company trains. In this research, the lead time between EEW and the arrival of S-wave was calculated for all the railway networks in the Tokyo metropolitan area assuming the occurrence of the northern Tokyo Bay earthquake, and the effects of disaster reduction were analyzed. As a result, it was shown that the risk to passengers can be reduced drastically using EEW.

May 16, 2009 Japan's first domestic case of infection of Swine-origin Influenza A/H1N1 was confirmed in Kobe. The government of Kobe City took precaution measure including the cancellation of classes at all the schools in the city region. It asked the citizens for washing their hands, outwearing the mask and the voluntary ban on leaving home of nonessential. But the important side effect to an economic activity occurred such as a sharp decrease of the number of tourists and a decrease in retail sales. The aim of this thesis is to examine to economic activities affected by Swineorigin Influenza A/H1N1 in Kobe and to pigeonhole the lessons learnt from the case.

The present study proposed the method for creating municipal reports in order to accomplish a common operational picture in emergency response. Emergency drills and participation of municipal officials were adopted. The problems were identified through the first drill, and then were addressed in working groups where officials participated. An inverse operational approach enabled them to create briefing papers for the emergency center, clearly indicating which department/team was in charge and what were the sources. The briefing papers were practically learned in the second drill. This study concluded that it is essential to hold meetings using appropriate briefing papers and to crossorganizationally deliver the agreed information, in order to establish a common operational picture.

This paper presents an approach to disaster mitigation of local communities using regional SNS, centering on the registration of individual information. The information items to be registered to the local community group of regional SNS are extracted through workshops conducted by residents. Then, user interfaces for regional SNS are designed and built. Residents living in the community register their individual information to the system. Through such an approach, authors summarize the process to promote extension of regional SNS for disaster mitigation.

At 2007 Niigataken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake, Kashiwazaki City developed an integrated database for managing the process of victims life recovery which called “Victims Master Database (VMDB)”. They realized rational support for victims life recovery by utilizing VMDB, and VMDB stored the logs of their response process. In this research, we analyzed comprehensively those logs aiming to clarify the reality of the process of their response. In this analysis, we tracked the transition of work volume in providing each administrative support program day by day, and classified the patterns of the transition of work volume by the hierarchical cluster analysis. Finally, based on the result of these analysis, we discussed the feature of administrative works classified in each pattern.

This study analyzes the realities of the separation of disaster-stricken villages by the collective relocation project and its impact on residents. We conducted a questionnaire survey for residents of Nishidani district in Nagaoka city. Clarified points are as follows; 1) To remain or to relocate was depending on the decision of each household. However, there was a trend that large households had relocated, and elderly single or couple households had remained. 2) The original villages were not only decreasing the population but also having uneven distribution of small elderly households. Especially in peripheral areas of the villages, more unfavorable conditions had happened. 3) On the other hand, relocated households generally showed higher intention of settlement and more life satisfaction, even though, many of them did not break up the relationship with their former living places.

This study aims to analyze and evaluate activities and roles of community leaders such as neighborhood community association following 2006 northern Kagoshima Prefecture flood disaster. As a case study, it is clarified that despite a claim that some of victims pursued responsibilities for flood damages through lawsuit, finally, most of them made a choice not compensation but administrative supports such as the Natural Disaster Victims Relief Law due to a coordinating role between victims and river administrators by community leaders. Based on their activities, we conclude that there are some communication rules between public administration and victims for smart recovery and partnership-based town and river development for the future.

This study aims to clarify how commissioned welfare volunteers could play a role of evacuation assistance for people with special needs in case of flood disaster which occurred in Sayo-cho,Hyogo prefecture by Typhoon 9th in August,2009. Both questionnaire research and interview was conducted to commissioned welfare volunteers. As a result we found that the delay of official evacuation council caused some confusion. As commissioned welfare volunteers had not got enough information on evacuation assistance from local government it was difficult to decide and initiate early evacuation against flood disaster. Development of collaboration with community manpower is inevitable for effective evacuation assistance on elderly and disabled people.