Development of Cloud-Based Support Tools for Effective Evacuation Focusing on Time-Phase from Pre-Registration to Post-Incident Response to Improve Literacy for Disaster Resilience

Abstract

In recent years, disasters have become more frequent and more severe in Japan. To ensure their safety, it is essential to ensure that all impacted individuals evacuate. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, the formulation of district evacuation plans and the My-Timeline have been promoted, and their importance has been recognized. In addition, information and communication technology (ICT) has rapidly developed in recent years and is being integrated into the field of disaster management. In this context, digital transformation (DX) has become essential. Given the need to enhance disaster preparedness, via DX, this study designs and develops a digital support tool using ICT to support the formulation of evacuation plans and enhance capacity building for disaster prevention among individual users. In particular, it develops functions that allow users to easily formulate a plan based on their pre-registration information and familiarize them with hazard risks. It also helps them envision the potential damage they will incur and learn the impact of their personal attribute information on their choice of evacuation action when formulating an evacuation plan. These functions were implemented as a cloud service and evaluated by users. The evaluation confirmed that the tool contributed to raising users’ awareness.