Development and Social Implementation of Smartphone App Nige-Tore for Improving Tsunami Evacuation Drills: Synergistic Effects Between Commitment and Contingency

Abstract

This research explored how we can improve tsunami evacuation behavior, which has been a major social issue since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. We introduce Nige-Tore, a smartphone app for supporting tsunami evacuation drills, which was developed within an interdisciplinary research framework. Nige-Tore serves as an effective interface tool that successfully visualizes the dynamic interactions between human actions (evacuation behavior) and natural phenomena (tsunami behavior). Drill participants can check, on their smartphone, the estimated inundation area of the approaching tsunami, along with their own current evacuation trajectory. The results of real-world trials using Nige-Tore show that the app is more powerful than conventional devices and methods that have been used in tsunami evacuation training, such as hazard maps and traditional drills that do not make use of any apps, because Nige-Tore provides an interface that enables commitment and contingency thinking—which at first glance appear to represent different orientations—to not only coexist but to synergize. “Commitment” (devotion or involvement) refers to the act of immersing oneself in and viewing as absolute one particular scenario or its potential to be actualized, given conditions in which infinite scenarios may be actualized, depending on the interactions between human systems and natural systems. “Contingency” thinking (an accidental or incidental state) refers to the act of relativizing and separating oneself from any particular scenario or its potential to be actualized, given the same conditions. The synergistic effect of “commitment” and “contingency” thinking also expands people’s capacity to cope with unexpected and unforeseen events.

Volume 12, Issue 1 | Journal of Integrated Disaster Risk Management | IDRiM Journal

“…Not only are all the town office staff involved in this initiative under the Kuroshio's unique Regional Staff System, but through this initiative, unique disaster prevention measures such as indoor evacuation drills (evacuation drills to the entrance and to the second floor) and the installation of individual storage boxes at evacuation sites have already been created in a bottom-up manner. The bottom-up approach has already produced some very unique disaster prevention measures (Sugiyama and Yamori 2020;Yamori and Sugiyama 2020). It would likely have been difficult to start a constructive discussion on what measures to take in response to NTEEI from the bottom up, without such preparation.…”

Mobile Alert and Warning in the United States and Japan: Confronting the Challenges of International Harmonization

“…For example, Tokyo officials have installed a type of educational “game” within a mobile device-based preparedness application available to residents. Use of the Personal Tsunami Evacuation Drill app, “Nige-Tore,” can positively impact preparedness outcomes (Yamori and Sugiyama 2020 ). Of course, mobile alert and warning messages and preparedness activities do not exist in a vacuum and parsing out their unique influence within a given communication ecology will be extremely difficult.…”

The Japanese Educational System as an International Model for Urban Resilience

“…The Japanese DRR model is holistic as it includes not only the human systems (human behavior in case of evacuation) but also the natural systems, which were focused on the creation and publication of hazard maps with the identification of potentially dangerous areas and safe areas. These approaches have proved to be more effective in mutual coordination; therefore, tools have been created and deployed to visualize the interaction between them [ 40 ]. In the following lines, some relevant tools are introduced.…”

“…(3) Assessment and reflection. The user’s success level appears on the screen, informing whether he or she has been more or less close to the danger zones [ 40 ]. As in the case of Kamaishi, the need for the subject to make his/her own decisions and act following his/her own judgment based on the specific behavior of the catastrophe is at the heart of the application.…”