[H-TT14] Geographic Information Systems and Cartography

[HTT14-12] Online Education of Disaster Risk Reduction using Web GIS: Applications to Chinese Secondary Schools

*Jiali Song¹, Takashi Oguchi² (1.Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 2.Center for Spatial Information Science, The University of Tokyo)

Keywords:Disaster risk reduction education, Web GIS, Learning effects

Use of Web GIS for DRR (Disaster Risk Reduction) has received attention in recent years. In 2022, a new subject of geography will become compulsory in Japanese high schools, and the guideline for the subject was provided by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. The guideline shows that the new subject focuses on maps, GIS, ESD (Education for Sustainable Development), international understanding, regional surveys, and DRR. Introducing Web GIS to DRR education in school classrooms will be essential for students to develop knowledge and skills of DRR. There have been Web GIS systems for school education in Japan. For example, ESRI Japan provides the ArcGIS Online service to Japanese schools for learning geography with GIS technology. As a disaster-prone country, Japan puts emphasis on pre-DRR actions, and has relatively strong DRR countermeasures. Therefore, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has allowed Japan to share the lessons learned from past earthquakes and other disasters. However, even in Japan, there are still no well-established guidelines for teaching DRR in schools, and it is still unknown whether students can understand DRR and improve their ability of DRR thinking by using GIS. Therefore, this study utilizes Web GIS technology to support geospatial thinking of students, and investigates factors influencing the learning effects of students. For this purpose, we developed materials for systematic DRR education and designed curricula to utilize the material effectively. This approach was implemented multiple times for students in Chinese secondary schools as online courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Questionnaire surveys were also conducted during the courses to collect information useful for evaluating the educational effects of our educational materials and curricula. Important findings from the questionnaire surveys are: 1) students who can pay more attention to disaster information tend to feel easier to learn DRR, whereas the past learning experience of Web hazard maps is only weakly related; 2) experience of using Web maps makes students easier to learn about hazard maps; and 3) ability of using electronic products helps students learn GIS.