[S23-2] Geoscience and society II

[S23-2-01] Action research towards effective disaster risk communication

^○Katsuya Yamori (Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan)

invited

Action research is one of the characteristic methods in social science. Action research must always take the subtle and complex texture of specific social phenomena into consideration when addressing issues of a practical field. Doing so makes action research more collaborative compared with standard empirical social science: collaboration between outsiders (e.g., researchers) and insiders (e.g., local people), collaboration among researchers representing different disciplines (e.g., between seismologists and psychologists), and collaboration between quantitative analyses which provide overall and general trends, and qualitative, which capture more individual and specific phenomena. I will introduce one example of action research that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative approaches and is applied to the field of disaster risk communication. An App called “Nige Tore," which means “evacuation training," was developed in the aftermath of the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The “Nige Tore" provides information such as tsunami hazard maps and the lead times before a predicted tsunami arrives at a specific location. During a drill, the “Nige Tore" records user location, evacuation route, and speed through GPS-equipped smartphones. It gives information about whether the individual participant can successfully escape to a safe place from different starting locations and via different routes. The development of “Nige Tore" drills has facilitated meaningful dialogues between developers and users. Research to date has validated the ability of “Nige Tore" functions to facilitate community members' motivation for quick evacuation, and to facilitate the integration of contributions from different stakeholders to co-establish tsunami risk communication system.