An attempt to implement tools to support examination of community-based activities for disaster mitigation: A case study in Toyokawa city, Japan

Japan is a country with a high risk for earthquake disasters. The measures used to promote structures’ seismic safety, such as reconstruction, widening narrow roads, and the response capacities to deal with huge earthquakes are important. Techniques to support the examination of countermeasures to huge earthquakes are required. To improve this capability, the authors developed tools to: (1) evaluate fire-spread risk, (2) evaluate the difficulty of emergency response and evacuation, and (3) evaluate capacities of neighborhood communities for disaster mitigation. The usefulness of the tools was clarified by the demonstration experiments of previous studies. The next step was implementation of the tools in community-based activities for disaster mitigation. This study aimed to clarify the usability and problems of implementing the tools in community-based activities. The tools were used at several workshops in actual community-based activities for disaster mitigation for one year. After the last workshop, interviews and a questionnaire were conducted on municipal staff and consultant staff. The results found that the tools visually showed the fire-spread risk, the difficulty of evacuation under current conditions and after improvements, and the effects of each disaster mitigation activity. The users could easily explore the draft plans to promote seismic safety of urban structures and response capabilities. The tools were positively incorporated into some community-based activities for disaster mitigation. Thus, the tools have the possibility of successful use at continuing community-based activities and the possibility of implementing the tools will be promoted.