No abstract

Tsunami evacuation simulation combining tsunami inundation simulation and people evacuation simulation was applied to the western half of tsunami-prone area of Banda Aceh and its use for tsunami disaster education and city planning was studied in cooperation with school teachers and city office personnel. People evacuation was simulated based on multiagent simulation handling over 20,000 agent models, including walking family, motorcycle, and automobile agents. Agent ratios and their basic responses were defined in a survey of mass evacuation in Meulaboh, Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, triggered by the May 7, 2010, earthquake. Tsunami inundation simulation theoretically replicated the 2004 great Indian Ocean tsunami as developed by Professor Shunichi Koshimura of Tohoku University who used a sophisticated source model. Several simulations were developed using different scenarios such as evacuation start timing, automobile evacuation ratios, and evacuee destinations. Simulations were shown to Banda Aceh school students and instructors and to municipal office personnel. Based on their evaluations, the tsunami evacuation simulation proved to be effective in disaster education and city planning and was improved by their suggestions. We plan to expand the simulation area to the eastern half of Banda Aceh for practical use.

The reconstruction of Banda Aceh has progressed in these three years and survivors are returning to the areas where they were formerly living. Several refuge buildings are being constructed in the coastal area to ensure safety of the nearby residents. However, people's minds would not be at ease without the confidence that they would obtain safety by taking refuge in the building. The authors studied applicability of two Japan's original disaster education methods for capacity building of community, holding a trainers' training workshop with the cooperation of the Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Research Center (TDMRC) of Syiah Kuala University. They introduced a visual education using the tsunami inundation and evacuation animation to the teachers, the volunteers, and the students in the area, and executed an exercise of the residents' participation type education using the town watching method. The participants were asked to evaluate these two methods by a questionnaire after the workshop. Most of them evaluated these methods as very effective and easy to use. The results from the questionnaire also showed clearly that the bottle neck in popularizing disaster education was lack of good education materials.