Quick Collection of Earthquake Damage Information and Effective Emergency Response by Collaboration Between Local Government and Residents

Abstract eng:
We developed a methodology for collecting quickly earthquake damage information and conducting effective emergency response by collaboration between a local government and residents. The methodology consists the PDCA cycle: "1. Orientation Meeting (Plan)", "2. Workshop (Do)", "3. Earthquake Drill (Check)", and "4. Evaluation Meeting (Act)". After discussing year's plan in the orientation meeting, community associations and city officials hold a workshop to make a disaster prevention map, which shows strong and weak points in the community area. After knowing the risk in the area, the participants discuss about what would happen during a large earthquake, and how to collaborate the city and the associations. During an earthquake drill, the collaboration is tested for emergency response and information sharing. First, residents carry out emergency response under a realistic disaster situation in community areas, such as fire fighting, rescue, and safety checking activities. Then, they make a damage information map after evacuating to the local community center, where government officials open a local emergency operation center to summarize the damage information of the community areas and send it to the emergency headquarter of the city. The headquarter summarizes all the data, and informs to the residents about important information, such as an evacuation order for a massive fire. After the drill, community members and the city officials discuss about how to improve the collaboration in an evaluation meeting. We applied the methodology to Toyohashi City in 2005 and 2006, and confirmed its validity and effectiveness.

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