2:57 PM - 3:15 PM
[U02-05] Progress of "Comprehensive Disaster Prevention Education" at Japan Geoscience Union Meeting
★Invited Papers
Keywords:comprehensive disaster prevention education, universality and continuity of disaster prevention education, systematization of disaster prevention education
The Great East Japan Earthquake had a great impact on all fields in which the Japan Geoscience Union was involved. The impact varies from field to field. In the field of education, it was a shock that disaster prevention education was powerless against the disaster. On the other hand, repeated evacuation drills worked for some of schools surviving the tsunami safely. Such cases impressively proved the effectiveness of disaster prevention education. Therefore, the people concerned with education insisted after the disaster on the implement of systematic disaster prevention education. However, at that time, I think it was not possible for any person including this author to think concretely about "systematic disaster prevention education."
Many of people involved in disaster prevention education feel difficulty to maintain continuity and universality. For example, even in an area where a volcanic disaster occurred hundreds of years ago, it is very difficult to pass on the history of the disaster from generation to generation through a long low-activity period. Moreover, even immediately after a disaster, it is not easy to expand the activation of disaster prevention education outside the disaster area. For example, after the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake, the Environmental Disaster Prevention Department was set up at one of the high schools in Hyogo Prefecture, but in the neighboring Osaka prefecture where the author worked, there was no particular emphasis on disaster prevention education.
Given these difficulties, the author and his collaborators tried to go back to the starting point and explore what can be taught about disaster risk reduction in the first place. Then, in the 2012 Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) Meeting we held a public session titled as "Disaster Prevention Education: What can we teach to overcome disasters?" . It was held also in 2013 and 2014, and a total of 17 experts gave lectures. The fields of each lecturer are diverse, such as disaster prevention administration, disaster prevention law, school education, psychology, disasters in the world and Japan, regional disaster prevention, disaster prevention, earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis. Through these lectures, it became clear that disaster prevention issues can be roughly divided into four areas. They are "disaster prevention mechanisms", "role of state and government", "disaster prevention technology and engineering", and "regional disaster prevention". Each area contains many fields. For example, "disaster mechanisms" includes earthquakes, volcanic activity, and meteorological disasters, and "role of state and government" includes disaster law and administrative response. Although these fields are independent of each other, they are actually closely related to each other. If such relationships can be clearly shown, it is expected that the aggregate of these four fields will form a system that can be called "disaster prevention science." At the proposal stage of the session, there was a voice asking why legal scholars were invited to the JpGU Meeting. On the questionnaire after the lecture, however, some people wrote that they got understand that the legal knowledge is essential to think about disaster prevention. This remark emphasizes the necessity for systematic disaster prevention knowledge.
I edited and published "A text book for the disaster prevention education at schools" in 2018 based on the lectures in the public sessions. There are many disaster prevention related issues beyond those covered in the sessions. Regarding these fields, we explained the purpose of the publication to researchers of each field and asked for their cooperation. Eventually I could get cooperation with 37 disaster prevention researchers and educators. This book is one of the milestones bound for the disaster prevention education, but it's also a starting point.
Many of people involved in disaster prevention education feel difficulty to maintain continuity and universality. For example, even in an area where a volcanic disaster occurred hundreds of years ago, it is very difficult to pass on the history of the disaster from generation to generation through a long low-activity period. Moreover, even immediately after a disaster, it is not easy to expand the activation of disaster prevention education outside the disaster area. For example, after the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake, the Environmental Disaster Prevention Department was set up at one of the high schools in Hyogo Prefecture, but in the neighboring Osaka prefecture where the author worked, there was no particular emphasis on disaster prevention education.
Given these difficulties, the author and his collaborators tried to go back to the starting point and explore what can be taught about disaster risk reduction in the first place. Then, in the 2012 Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) Meeting we held a public session titled as "Disaster Prevention Education: What can we teach to overcome disasters?" . It was held also in 2013 and 2014, and a total of 17 experts gave lectures. The fields of each lecturer are diverse, such as disaster prevention administration, disaster prevention law, school education, psychology, disasters in the world and Japan, regional disaster prevention, disaster prevention, earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis. Through these lectures, it became clear that disaster prevention issues can be roughly divided into four areas. They are "disaster prevention mechanisms", "role of state and government", "disaster prevention technology and engineering", and "regional disaster prevention". Each area contains many fields. For example, "disaster mechanisms" includes earthquakes, volcanic activity, and meteorological disasters, and "role of state and government" includes disaster law and administrative response. Although these fields are independent of each other, they are actually closely related to each other. If such relationships can be clearly shown, it is expected that the aggregate of these four fields will form a system that can be called "disaster prevention science." At the proposal stage of the session, there was a voice asking why legal scholars were invited to the JpGU Meeting. On the questionnaire after the lecture, however, some people wrote that they got understand that the legal knowledge is essential to think about disaster prevention. This remark emphasizes the necessity for systematic disaster prevention knowledge.
I edited and published "A text book for the disaster prevention education at schools" in 2018 based on the lectures in the public sessions. There are many disaster prevention related issues beyond those covered in the sessions. Regarding these fields, we explained the purpose of the publication to researchers of each field and asked for their cooperation. Eventually I could get cooperation with 37 disaster prevention researchers and educators. This book is one of the milestones bound for the disaster prevention education, but it's also a starting point.