Workshop Program on Disaster Prevention and Mitigation for Young Generation Utilizing Disaster Information Tweeting and Mapping System

Abstract

Various large-scale natural disasters occur every year in Japan. Then, various disaster education is conducted at schools and in local communities for alleviating the damage caused by such natural disasters. However, according to various surveys, disaster prevention awareness among young people is known to be lower than in other age groups in Japan. Therefore, we worked with Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, on establishing a program of workshops on disaster prevention and mitigation utilizing ICT equipment such as smartphones or tablet PCs to raise awareness of disaster prevention and mitigation among young people. The program is based on town watching and group discussion using DITS and DIMS (disaster information tweeting and mapping system) proposed in the previous studies. In this paper, we introduce the contents of the developed workshop program using DITS/DIMS. Moreover, we report on the results of the workshops for disaster prevention and mitigation using this program at several junior high and high schools. The results of the post-questionnaire show that many participants of the workshops had a positive impression on the disaster prevention and mitigation workshops using DITS/DIMS.