Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 emphasizes to pay attention to both natural hazards and vulnerabilities of societies, and to understand unique characters of a community for disaster risk reduction.　To reduce casualties at schools and disruption of educational services by natural disasters, a comprehensive school safety is needed by increasing safety of educational facilities, enhancing school disaster management as well as promoting education for disaster risk reduction.　Understanding disaster risk at each school level is a world-wide issue to enhance comprehensive school safety.　Knowledge lessons accumulated through the Japanese international cooperation on school disaster safety are many common in implementation of the Japanese school safety practices.　International cooperation should promote more participation of the practitioners and researchers in the Japanese school safety field, so that mutual learning could be enhanced through international cooperation.

Hongo, Tonicho-cho, Kamaishi-City here at the Toni-Hongo is located in the tsunami-prone area the Sanriku coast, which is also known as the residential relocation to the uplands after the Showa Sanriku tsunami.　In a previous study, Yaichiro Yamaguchi pointed out the concern of the “old site return” where the village was located before the disaster, but the “old site” was unable to live due to the construction of the Tsunami seawall.　On the other hand, the number of dwellings was increasing in the “lowlands” including the flooded area of the Showa tsunami.　In the Great East Japan Earthquake, the “highlands” were spared damage, while the “lowlands” were devastated.　Reconstruction projects after the Great East Japan Earthquake legally prohibited residents from living in the tsunami inundation area, and resolved concerns about “dwellings in the lowlands.”　In this study, we clarified the transition of the village in Tonicho Hongo after the relocation to a highlands, and the actual condition and factor group of “dwellings in the lowlands”.

The supreme court decision of the Okawa Elementary School tsunami compensation case has indicated that schools ensure safety from disasters by taking damages beyond prediction into considerations even if it is not projected on existing hazard maps.　It is important for teachers responsible for school safety to learn how to interpret hazard maps based on the topography.　The aim of this paper is to develop an online teacher training program to address the need.　This is an effort by the authors with geography and other academic and professional backgrounds and thereby connecting the knowledge of geography （geomorphology） related to topography and maps with teachers at school.

According to the reports titled World Urbanization Prospects published by the Population Division of the United Nations, “urban agglomeration” is defined as the population that is contained within the contours of a contiguous territory inhabited at urban density levels without regard to administrative boundaries.　The author points out over-estimates of population of urban agglomerations for Japan in the Prospects due to inappropriate use of the Japanese data as well as to confusion in spatial concepts.　As for Japan, the author proposes to delineate a spatial unit based on Contiguous Densely Inhabited Districts conforming more closely to the definition of urban agglomeration of the Prospects described above.