In the 30 years since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, Japan has renewed its legal system and administrative organization for disaster management based on experiences and lessons learned from major disasters. After the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, the government focused on speeding up the initial response, improving support for affected people, and reconstruction to cope with urban-type disasters. After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, the government focused on special reconstruction systems, building national resilience, and promoting public-private partnership to cover the limitations of public assistance. In recent years, the government has also been enhancing attentive support for various vulnerable groups, such as women, children, older people, and people with disabilities.

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The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995, which drew attention as the “first year of volunteerism,” led to the institutionalization of disaster volunteer centers and the enactment of the Act on Promotion of Specified Non-profit Activities in 1998 and the emergence of the third sector, which was considerably behind that of other advanced countries. The volunteers and the third sector, which responds to disasters, have developed institutionally differently from volunteers and third sector active in other areas because of the characteristics of disasters, which “come only occasionally to a certain area.” Unlike the government, which responds in a hierarchical manner, the volunteers' and the third sector 's disaster response is based on “coordination” to optimize the response according to the situation, and the system has been refined with each disaster.

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The Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law enacted in 1961 in the wake of the Isewan Typhoon defines “disaster prevention” as “the prevention of disasters, the prevention of the spread of damage when disasters occur, and the restoration of damage when disasters occur. The Basic Law on Disaster Countermeasures defines “disaster reduction” as “preventing disasters from occurring, preventing the spread of damage in the event of a disaster, and restoring the damage. As shown in Figure 1, since the enactment of the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law, there has been no disaster that caused more than 1,000 deaths or missing persons until the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake on January 17, 19951）. In other words, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake was a disaster that posed a major challenge to how to “prevent the spread of damage” and “achieve disaster recovery” in the case of a disaster that caused large-scale damage. In particular, Information Communication Technology (ICT) has evolved greatly from 1961 to 1995, and in the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake some of its potential were showed. This paper describes the progress of information processing technology and its expected applicability to disaster response.

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In Kumamoto Prefecture, since 6 years have passed after the Kumamoto Earthquake, there are concern that the memory of the natural disaster is fading. To address this, efforts to pass on the experience and memories of the survivors are being planned. Local governments and research institutions such as universities are spearheading this initiative. What has changed is the opportunities for victims to talk about their experience and pass on their personal stories. This study focus on narrative, a method of passing on memory, and examines the impact of a disaster archive exhibition, combined with a talk event, and a panel exhibition of universityowned disaster-related materials and research results. Disaster victims had the opportunity to tell their stories related to the event, before their memories fade, since 7 years have passed since the event. The results of this study showed that the exhibition of such disaster archives have a significant impact on the opportunities to talk to disaster victims. The results reveal that the disaster archive exhibition provided a perspective on the disaster as a whole and an opportunity to uncover new stories about the survivorʼs experience.

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Severe hailfall occurred in Gunma and Saitama prefectures on June 2, 2022. The relationship between the hailfall characteristics and damages was investigated using information from local governments, news reports, interviews with schools, and weather reports from citizens. The hailfall area was approximately 70 km long and 17 km wide. Hailstone size ranged from smaller than 1 cm to larger than 5 cm in maximum diameter. This hailfall caused extensive damage to people (95 persons), residential and non-residential buildings (approximately 2,325 cases), agriculture (at least 3.39 billion yen), and vehicles. Human casualties occurred in areas with hailstones larger than 5 cm. Residential and non-residential damages occurred in areas with hailstones larger than 3 cm. On the other hand, agricultural damage was reported in areas with hailstones smaller than 3 cm. Car body dents were observed in areas with hailstones larger than 1 cm of hail.

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Neighborhood associations face issues such as declining participation rates and a shortage of officers. This study conducted an interview survey to understand the issues and the situation of neighborhood associations and examined the continuity process of community disaster management by neighborhood associations after the Shirutanigawa Project, and to examine the way of continuous activities using the Modified Grounded Theory Approach. As results, in the community, we have confirmed a decrease in community interaction, a diversification of residents' ideas, and a tendency to pursue responsibility, making it difficult to reach a consensus in the community. Their initiative was carried out while accepting the situation in which it was difficult to explain to residents and devise ways to encourage their participation. To continue the initiative, activities need to be developed in stages, convergence to reduce burdens, and mutual help based on neighborhood. In addition, psychological changes such as resignation and dissatisfaction on the part of those involved were confirmed as reasons for abandoning the continuation of the initiative.

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With the rapid spread of social media, it is currently common to see various heavy rain videos filmed by individuals. However, it remains unclear how the viewers feel about flood-risk. Using rain videos with different audiovisual conditions, we examined whether audiovisual stimuli affect people's perception of rainfall. The results revealed that the loudness of sound, height of sound, brightness of the image, and size of the screen each had an effect on rain perception; of which, the loudness of the sound had the greatest effect. In addition, we found that women perceived rainfall more strongly than men, and that younger people were more sensitive to stimuli. Our findings enable discussions of the reproducibility of rain and sensory characteristics of rain perceived through the viewing of rain videos.

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