This study examined the applicability of the deep learning-based damage identification technique from aerial images in estimating insured typhoon-induced economic losses from building damage. We analyzed the post-disaster aerial images and non-life insurance data obtained in Chiba, Japan after the Typhoon Faxai in September 2019. The insured economic losses were estimated from building damage ratio by the deep learning technique and insured building values. The results showed the deep learning model slightly overestimated the building damage without blue tarps on their roofs. However, the deep learning-derived economic losses showed good agreement not only with the result by visual interpretation of aerial images but also with the actual building losses.

During heavy rainfall disasters, quantitative assessments of disaster risk are necessary to support municipalities' decision to issue evacuation information and residents' decision on whether to evacuate has been noted. In this research, two disaster risk assessment methods are proposed for municipalities and residents, based on the evacuation time. Afterwards, in a flood scenario of Joso City, the lead-time of municipalities' evacuation decisions has been calculated by the municipality-oriented assessment method. Meanwhile, the temporal variation of evacuation difficulty of each resident has been quantified by resident-oriented assessment method. As a result, the proposed methods have been considered feasible to support the evacuation decisions of municipalities and residents.

This study proposes a new warm standby method for computer servers based on seismic response. The proposed method triggers a warm standby in the case that the exceedance probability of the safety limit of seismic response predicted by the last two-second observation record exceeds a preset threshold. Numerical simulations showed that the proposed method reduced the loss cost by 1.64% compared to conventional methods. To validate this method, we conducted shaking table tests. When a simulated earthquake motion was input, the loss cost was reduced by 60.6%. However, when observed records were input, the loss cost was increased by 3.89%. The results suggest that it is necessary improve the input ground motion model.

If many people try to evacuate simultaneously in highly inhabited area, heavy traffic may occur at the bottlenecks such as bridges, and the evacuation may fail to complete orderly. According to the previous survey, people living in the eastern Tokyo, which is known for flood-prone and densely populated area, do not necessarily realize these risks unique to large cities. Therefore, evacuation control by the government or local community is needed to realize the citizen’s safe evacuation. In the field of economics, a method called “tradable permits” is used to control the people’s demands under the external diseconomies’ situation. In this paper, with applying one of the “tradable permits” models, which has been suggested in transportation field, to flood evacuation, we discuss the possibility of the introduction of the method.

In order to reduce the damage caused by floods in Tokyo, this study attempted to clarify the current status of fire brigade response to floods in Japan, and to examine how fire brigades can better respond to floods in the future. Based on the literature survey and interview survey on flood damage response in Japan, issues were extracted, and countermeasures for these issues were devised through 5E analysis. As a result, the following recommendations were made: the penetration of manuals and their optimization, effective use of materials and equipment, awareness building for wide-area operation, review of the contents of flood drills, more efficient evacuation publicity, and strengthening of safety management training.

Heavy rain, landslide, and reservoir damage have frequently caused massive disasters. In order to evacuate immediately from natural hazards, living conditions in evacuation shelters may become an important factor in choosing evacuation places. The purpose of this study is to clarify the factors of selecting evacuation places for heavy rain. A questionnaire survey was conducted to residents in Asahi district of Kunisaki City in Oita Prefecture. The result indicated that there was a tendency to select to move to any evacuation places other than staying homes in the attributes of wooden houses and one-story houses. It was also revealed that respondents who feel more anxious about shelters tend to choose their own homes.

The study examined four hypotheses for promoting the formulation of Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), which were derived from the author's previous research. Questionnaires and interviews were utilized to investigate these hypotheses. As a result, the three hypotheses "SMEs that have disaster imagination are more willing to formulate BCPs," "SMEs will be more willing to formulate BCPs that can be incorporated into their regular business operations," and "SMEs with the understanding of BCP formulation methods based on consequence events are more motivated to formulate BCPs” are supported while “SMEs would be more willing to develop BCPs if they could aid in resolving their management issues” was not supported.

This study focuses on the differences in the pre-disaster recovery plans and relocation to higher ground in 11 of the 19 coastal cities and towns in Wakayama Prefecture, in terms of the planning system and the status of the plans as statutory plans. The purpose of this paper is to understand the actual status of pre-disaster recovery planning in 9 municipalities in Wakayama Prefecture, and to investigate the formulation system and issues that have led to the differences. By doing so, the paper aims to contribute to future discussions on "how pre-disaster recovery plans should be developed in consideration of population decline and highly uncertain tsunami disasters such as the Nankai Trough great earthquake" and "how to make them more effective".

Recently, many elderly and disabled people have been affected by torrential rain disasters. In 2021, the Basic Act on Disaster Countermeasures was revised, and it became mandatory to make an effort to create individual evacuation plans for those who need evacuation assistance. On the other hand, advanced municipalities have already completed the plans before the revision of the law. In this study, we conducted a survey those municipalities to determine their preparation policies and issues to clarify the latest status in Japan. As a result, reducing the burden on evacuation support personnel and establishing evacuation sites were clarified for effective evacuation assistance in the next issues.

The study aimed to investigate the impact of the urban planning system on land use transition in the Nigorigawa River watershed in Kofu City, as well as the changes in flood risk within the watershed. For this purpose, we analyzed land use change in the entire watershed over time and a detailed analysis of land use change in the urbanization control area within the watershed. The study results showed that development regulations were implemented smoothly in the river basin after Kofu City was designated as a zoning district in 1971. However, the deregulation of the urbanization control area, which included the formulation of the urban planning master plan in 2001 and the enforcement of Ordinance 3411 the following year, led to the development of residential land in the flood inundation zone.

In the areas affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, storytelling has been widely practiced. In this study, we conducted a four-group comparison experiment to examine the learning effects of "TSUNAMI-REAL," a shorttime disaster storytelling program, by changing the duration (long/short) and the format (TSUNAMI-REAL/normal lecture) of the storytelling. The results showed that the following three points: in TSUNAMI-REAL, 1) the amount of information that can be conveyed and the change in the listener's emotions are slightly lower, 2) listeners can more easily feel the reality of the disaster, and 3) listeners can remember more contents that the storyteller considers important than in regular storytelling.

Municipalities need to operate smoothly even in places where they temporarily set up their citizen response operations. This study focuses on the space and organizational management of the vaccine venue, targeting the mass vaccination venue for the new corona vaccine in City A, and aims to find factors that affect the operation. The results of the analysis indicated that the following factors affect the smooth operation of the municipality's citizen response operations in a temporarily used facility: (1) the apt placement and flow line planning of specialized procedures, and (2) business management, especially the local headquarters function.

In Japan, long-term care insurance providers are required to maintain critical operations during natural disasters. This study focuses on long-term care insurance providers in the town of Sayo that experienced flooding. Questionnaire surveys were administered to assess business continuity and disaster preparedness. In addition, interviews were conducted with senior citizen welfare officials at the Sayo Town Office. By analyzing these surveys, we examined factors that hinder or promote the seamless operation and disaster preparedness of long-term care insurance service providers.

Individual privacy is respected in condominiums, but this makes it difficult to notice when individuals may require external assistance. To clarify the conditions of persons with special needs in condominiums, we surveyed the management staff of condominiums. The survey was conducted online, and 2,578 people (82.4% response rate) completed it. The survey revealed that the management staff identifies persons with special needs and provides support such as daily monitoring. It also indicated that the older the condominium and the larger the number of units, the more likely it is to have a resident with special needs. The results suggest that disaster preparedness for persons in condominiums with special needs must become more important in the future.

In this study, a study session tool was developed to support residents, managers, and governments to understand the social contingencies of the Nankai Trough earthquake and its extra information. We conducted workshops that participants were encouraged to consider their actions in a case of the Nankai Trough earthquake occurrence with time lag. As a result, it was pointed out that the implementation of developed tools in workshops with residents and administrative officials should promote participants’ understandings and imagination of the Nankai Trough earthquake and its extra information.

In schools, disaster prevention plans and manuals are being developed along with training and disaster prevention education. In special-needs schools in particular, there is a movement to formulate business continuity plans that meet the needs of students with highly individualized disabilities. Therefore, we conducted a survey on how teachers think about the continuity of important business operations in the event of a disaster, as well as on their own disaster awareness and efforts. The results revealed that they consider the continuation of educational projects to be a low priority, and that they do not consider cooperation among teachers to be high.

This paper focuses on the work of city employees in dealing with a series of unexploded ordnance in Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, in 2022, and examines the actual conditions and issues regarding the volume and content of work. Suita City conducted operations in parallel with normal duties for 2,120 target persons, including 120 persons requiring special consideration, living in an area of 0.28㎢, and city employees spent approximately 9,300 hours (3-4 hours per person). City staff spent the most time discussing how to proceed with each task in staff consultations and meetings. Suita City did not have an UXO response example or crisis response policy, which required more time. It was also noted that support for the preparation of meeting materials was effective during crisis response.

Disaster management in Japan are to be developed and promoted through comprehensive and systematic disaster prevention administration under the Basic Act on Disaster Management. On the other hand, a framework for comprehensive countermeasures may be established for each individual disaster under a framework such as the Act on Special Measures. By focusing on the enactment process of the Basic Act on Disaster Management and the Act on Special Measures Concerning Countermeasures for Active Volcanoes, this paper clarifies the process in which the framework of special measures laws for each individual disaster was applied in the process of increasing centralization in individual administration after the establishment of a comprehensive disaster management legal system.

The government responds to emergencies by establishing Emergency Management Headquarters to protect the lives, bodies, and property of residents from crises. There are no studies on emergency management that have clarified the characteristics of emergency response. This study clarified the variety in response to emergencies by focusing on the type of emergency event, based on the actual establishment of Emergency Management Headquarters in Japanese prefectures.

Our study aimed to investigate COVID-19 measures by local municipalities within the framework of disaster prevention activities of local communities. The results of the questionnaire survey and the subsequent interviews on the municipalities in Shizuoka prefecture revealed that many disaster prevention drills were suspended until September in 2021, but since then, had been conducted. It was also shown that the municipalities had provided local communities financial and know-how support against corona-virus infection. However, fail-safes of infection protection, indemnity after infection, and storage life of the record may have to be improved.

Although the documentary materials for disaster response are regarded as important, there is no example of systematic description and analysis of the process of creating a record book for the process of disaster recovery from the occurrence of a disaster as a task of disaster response. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the actual situation by focusing on actual cases of the process of creating a record book conducted by the Miyagi Prefectural Government. Based on the analysis, we presented a project period, project system, creation method, and description contents as know-how and tips for local governments to create such a book with the same purpose in the future.

This study aims to clarify the issues of disaster response in the case of an earthquake with a tsunami that occurs outside of office hours in a municipality whose government building is within the expected tsunami inundation area, and to identify the possible disaster response measures to be taken in the gathering system by residential area. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, activities that should be implemented immediately after the gathering were identified, the identified activities were compiled as action cards, and two drills were conducted. Issues specific to the residential area based gathering system and issues common to the normal disaster response headquarters system were identified, and improvement measures were proposed.

In response to the natural disasters that have frequently occurred in recent years, municipalities are required to further enhance and strengthen their crisis management systems. The purpose of this study is to quantitatively analyze the influence of disaster prevention consciousness of the mayor or senior staff on the construction of a crisis management systems using the results of a questionnaire survey. Factor analysis, a chi-square test and logistic regression are used as the analysis method. In addition, in order to supplement the results of the quantitative analysis, an interview survey was conducted focusing on Ise City, Mie Prefecture, which was selected as an advanced disaster prevention city.

This study clarified the uniformity among the 34 types of municipal earthquake hazard maps published in Kyoto Prefecture by referring to the method of preparation and contents of the municipal earthquake hazard maps. In addition, through the "Municipal Earthquake HM Linkage Map," this study clarified the consistency among the municipal earthquake hazard maps. As a result, it was revealed that the descriptions and expressions in the earthquake municipal hazard maps were not standardized among municipalities. It was also revealed that the seismic intensity was not consistent when viewed by neighboring municipalities when viewed in adjacent municipalities.

This study aimed to explore the widening process of "disaster risk reduction (DRR) literacy" gap. A gap-widening process was hypothesized utilizing the theoretical framework of predisposition and selective exposure. Based on a webbased 2 wave panel survey data (N=457), we tested the hypotheses on the relationships between predispositional DRR literacy and selective exposure to DRR-related activities and supportive activities. The analyses demonstrated that: 1) the higher the level of DRR literacy, the more likely the respondents were to be exposed to DRR-related activities and supportive activities and 2) although the respondents were biasedly exposed to such activities, DRR literacy gap was not consistently widened by the interaction between predisposition and selective exposure.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, when many coastal residential districts were washed away by the tsunami, there has been growing interest in moving to higher ground in advance. However, few cities moved because the effects of pre-relocation are difficult to see. In this comparative study, we calculated the cost-effectiveness of relocating in advance for Rikuzentakata City, Onagawa Town, Higashi Matsushima City, and Ishinomaki City. The results showed that the greater the advance relocation, the greater the damage mitigation effect. It can be implemented with an expenditure of about 20 million yen per resident household.

In Japan, owners of companion animals are encouraged to evacuate with their animals to a safe place — yet, most evacuation centers are not ready to accept evacuees with their animals. There are various reasons why the acceptance of evacuees with their animals is not improving at evacuation centers. People with allergies are a significant barrier to the acceptance of animal companions at evacuation centers. Thus, this study focuses on dogs and cats as companion animals and conducts a survey of people who own neither dogs nor cats, asking for their opinions on accepting evacuees along with their animals. Based on the results, this study provides insights into which acceptance methods can be used for allowing evacuees to accompanied by their companion animals at evacuation centers.

The purpose of this study is to examine measures to promote residents' participation in risk communication for nuclear disaster prevention using the persona method. Assuming the characteristics of each persona, we created objective and reproducible messages to promote residents to participate in risk communication and tested whether presenting such messages would motivate residents to participate. We found that a slight change in the text according to each cluster's interest in social issues, knowledge of nuclear disaster prevention, and degree of interest and empathy increased residents' willingness to participate.

This paper clarifies the SDF's own evaluation and sense of issues surrounding disaster relief based on an online survey conducted on the Ground Self-Defense Force's units that conduct on-site response (companies), which play a central role in disaster relief. The survey indicated that the SDF's disaster relief deployment provides a wide range of support in Japan's current disaster response, and in this sense the SDF is indispensable in disaster response; on the other hand, the heavy use of the SDF in disaster relief may have a certain impact on training plans. In such a situation, it is important for the SDF to have a regular exchange and cooperation between the basic local governments and the units of the district in which they operate, and to cooperate with them in case of emergency.

This study aims to explore the challenges faced by sexual minority individuals in Japan during disasters, including difficulties in expressing their increasingly complex identities. As Japan is prone to disasters, this study seeks to understand the disaster needs of the sexual minority population and identify reasons why potential sexual minority advocates may not emerge during such crises.

The actual situation of the local evacuation shelter registration system was grasped from officers in charge of disaster prevention in the local government. Besides, a structural model of residents' disaster prevention behavioral intentions regarding local evacuation shelters was verified. As results, municipalities expected to secure shelters by establishing local evacuation shelters, but because they could not guarantee the conditions and safety of the shelters, they had not informed the residents. Besides, in areas with local evacuation shelters, residents' awareness of community interaction and descriptive normative awareness increased their intentions for disaster prevention actions at local evacuation shelters. Routineness bias lowered descriptive norms. The descriptive norm was caught between awareness of community interaction and routine bias. In addition, the structural model presented in this paper was suitable for cases where the residents were mainly active in the local area and had a sense of affinity with the community association.

To reduce volcanic disasters, it is important for residents to practice mutual support under the leadership of voluntary disaster reduction groups. However, many communities lack the human resource for their future leaders. To address this issue, we proposed a digital tool for residents to develop leaders by themselves. The system requirements were determined to enable residents to conduct autonomous and effective tabletop exercise in both in-person and remote formats. The usefulness of the tool was confirmed through workshops with residents of the areas at the foot of Mt. Fuji.

This study aims to identify the environmental factors of residential burglary at the meso- or micro-scale using a systematic review. As a result, environmental factors were classified into 6 concepts and 11 categories based on the theory of environmental criminology. In addition, this study proposed crime prevention measures for each category based on environmental criminology. furthermore, we clarified the challenges in using CPTED to build a safe and secure society in Japan. In the future, many empirical studies of environmental criminology are needed to better understand the environmental factors of crime.

In this study, a numerical analysis of the collection and transportation of disaster debris from the Tokyo metropolitan earthquake was conducted. As a result, it was indicated that wide-area treatment should contribute to reducing the treatment period and that securing priority roads for disaster debris transporters should improve the flow of disaster debris, thereby smoothing the flow from discharge to treatment. In addition, the concept of "quality of recovery (QOR)," which is based on the subjective level of satisfaction with local recovery and reconstruction and objective determinants of recovery quality, was proposed from the viewpoint of the stored amount of disaster debris temporarily at temporary sites.

The Japan Small and Medium Enterprise Agency published guidelines for developing business continuity plan. They and some prefectural governments are promoting business continuity measures for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) during disasters. Due to the full-fledged BCP requires time and budget costs, the focus of these projects is to promote 1st-step simple measures including cooperation among local offices.In this study, we embodied the 1st-step BCP simple sheet and a group work methodology. A demonstration experiment was conducted in Arakawa Ward, Tokyo. Finally, based on the demonstration, the methodology and its effects were discussed.