Information Systems Frontiers

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-020-10082-9

Development and Implementation of an ICT-based Disaster

Prevention and Mitigation Education Program
for the Young Generation*
Osamu Uchida 1 & Sachi Tajima 2 & Yoshitaka Kajita 3 & Keisuke Utsu 4 & Yuji Murakami 5 & Sanetoshi Yamada 6

Accepted: 19 October 2020

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
Japan is one of the disaster-prone countries. Then, various disaster education is conducted in schools and local communities for
alleviating the damage caused by disasters. However, according to various surveys, disaster prevention awareness among young
people is known to be lower than in other age groups in Japan. Therefore, we worked with Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, on
establishing an ICT-based program on disaster prevention and mitigation to raise awareness of disaster prevention and mitigation
among young people. The program is based on the workshop consisting of town watching and group discussion using DITS/
DIMS (disaster information tweeting and mapping system) proposed in the previous studies. In this paper, we introduce the
contents of the established education program on disaster prevention and mitigation for the young generation. Moreover, we
report on the results of the workshops for disaster prevention and mitigation using this program at several junior high and high
schools in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The results of the post-questionnaire show that many participants had a positive
impression on the developed disaster education program.

Keywords Disaster prevention and mitigation . Disaster education . Disaster information . Town watching . Social media . Twitter

1 Introduction

Japan is one of the disaster-prone countries because of it’s geo-

graphical, topographical, and meteorological conditions. For
The manuscript is a revised and expanded version of the paper entitled example, the number of deaths and missing persons caused
“Workshop Program on Disaster Prevention and Mitigation for Young by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 and the
Generation Utilizing Disaster Information Tweeting and Mapping
Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 are more than 6,000 and
System” presented at the 4th IFIP Conference on Information
Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction, Ukraine, Oct. 2019. 20,000, respectively (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan
2015). Damages caused by typhoons and heavy rains are also
* Osamu Uchida frequent. Table 1 summarizes the human suffering caused by
o-uchida@tokai.ac.jp the heavy rains and floods that have occurred in Japan in recent
years. As shown in this table, a large number of deaths occur
1
Department of Human and Information Science, Tokai University, each year due to flood damage. Then, to mitigate the damage
Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, Japan caused by natural disasters, various disaster prevention and mit-
2
Center for Liberal Arts, Tokai University, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, igation education programs have been conducted in schools and
Japan local communities in Japan (Yamori 2007; Shiwaku et al.
3
Department of Civil Engineering, Tokai University, 2016). At the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, elemen-
Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, Japan tary and junior high school students in Kamaishi City, Iwate
4
Department of Communication and Network Engineering, Tokai Prefecture, Japan were able to take appropriate evacuation ac-
University, Minato, Tokyo, Japan tions based on the results of daily disaster prevention education
5
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Tokai based on tsunami-tendenko (Katada and Kanai 2016; Public
University, Kumamoto, Japan Relations Office, Government of Japan 2013). Tsunami-
6
Research and Information Center, Tokai University, tendenko is a lesson about disasters in the Sanriku region,
Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, Japan Japan, which has been hit by tsunamis many times in the past,

and it means that people should evacuate from the tsunami
alone without taking any belongings or waiting for their family
(Suppasri et al. 2012; Kodama 2015). For this reason, there is a
renewed focus on the importance of disaster prevention educa-
tion in recent years. However, according to various surveys,
disaster prevention awareness among young people is known
to be lower than in other age groups in Japan. Therefore, we
developed an ICT-based disaster prevention and mitigation ed-
ucation program for young people in collaboration with
Kanagawa Prefecture (http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/english/),
Japan. Kanagawa Prefecture is an area that is expected to
suffer significant damage from the Tokyo Metropolitan
Earthquake (Nagamatsu and Hayashi 2012) and the Nankai
Trough Earthquake (Shibutani 2020), both of which are feared
to occur in the near future. The reason why we tried to utilize
ICT for disaster prevention and mitigation education is mainly
due to the followings:
& using social media during a disaster is becoming common
(Imran et al. 2015; Simon et al. 2015),
& the majority of junior high school and high school students
in Japan have a smartphone and actively use it.
The established education program is based on a workshop
consisting of two parts: (1) a town watching using DITS (di-
saster information Tweeting system), and (2) a group discus-
sion using DIMS (disaster information mapping system).
DITS and DIMS are proposed by us in previous studies
(Uchida et al. 2016; Kosugi et al. 2017).
In this paper, we introduce the contents of the established
education program on disaster prevention and mitigation for
the young generation. Moreover, we report on the results of
the workshops for disaster prevention and mitigation using
this program at several junior high and high schools in
Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
2 Disaster Education in Schools and Local
Communities in Japan
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Japan is a disaster-
prone country, then various disaster education programs are
Table 1 Human suffering caused
by the heavy rains and floods that Cause of the disaster
have occurred in Japan
2019 Typhoon Hagibis
2018 Western Japan Floods
2017 Northern Kyushu Heavy Rainfall
2016 Typhoon Lionrock
2015 Kanto-Tohoku Heavy Rainfall
2014 Heavy Rainfall in Hiroshima
Inf Syst Front
provided in schools and communities in Japan. Many school
personnel, including students, were affected by the Great East
Japan Earthquake. Therefore, since then, disaster prevention
and mitigation education in schools have been enhanced. The
following are some of the distinctive methods of them.
2.1 DIG (Disaster Imagination Game)
DIG (Disaster imagination game) is one of the popular
methods of disaster prevention drill which uses maps
and transparent overlay (Komura and Hirano 1997).
The rules for playing DIG is as follows (Yanagawa
et al. 2016):
1. Put a large blank map of the target region on the table.
2. Put several layers of transparent plastic sheets over the
map and mark the most important facilities such as hos-
pitals and schools in the target region on the first layer of
the transparent paper.
3. Mark roads and expressways, rivers, and higher grounds
with different colors on the other transparent sheet.
4. Draw the expected damages, such as road disruptions on
the other transparent sheet.
5. Draw the evacuation plan on the last transparent layer
while considering the conditions and important facilities.
6. Compare the map of marked safe places with an existing
hazard map of flooding and other dangers in the region.
7. Discuss the disaster risks and problems in the region that
the participants have discovered through this activity.
DIG has the advantage of being able to flexibly change
their implementation methods according to the attributes of
the participants and their level of knowledge about disaster
prevention. However, the drawback is that it requires a large
map and a relatively large space to expand the map.
2.2 Nigechizu (Evacuation Map) Creation
Nigechizu (“逃げ地図”) means an evacuation map and is a
handmade map that shows the time to the target evacuation
site with eight colored pencils (Moriwaki et al. 2019,
Nigechizu manual 2016). The coloring of the road will help
people intuitively understand where the danger zone and the
Year and month # of deaths and missing people
Oct. 2019 86
July 2018 229
July 2017 42
Aug. 2016 29
Sept. 2015 20
Aug. 2014 84
Inf Syst Front
direction of escape. The method of making nigechizu is as
follows:
1. Prepare eight colored pencils (green, yellow-green, yel-
low, orange, red, brown, blue, and black), a blank map,
and strings. The strings are used to measure the distance
that elderly people can escape in 3 minutes (129 m). The
length of the strings should be determined according to
the scale of the nigechizu to be made.
2. Have green colored pencils and the strings.
3. Match the string to the road in the opposite direction from
the evacuation site and paint the road with colored pencils
for the length of the string.
4. Work #2 from all evacuation sites. When it’s done,
change to the next color. Repeat the process.
5. When all the colors are painted, write an arrow indicating
which direction is closer to the evacuation site.
The point of creating a nigechizu is that the participants can
understand the risks of the entire living area easily after it is
created. In addition, the creation of nigechizu is expected to
provide a place where men and women of all ages can talk
seriously about disaster prevention and evacuation. Nigechizu
can be created with only simple materials, but the workshop of
it is basically focused on escape. Then, it cannot be denied that
this may not lead to raising awareness of disaster prevention
from a broader perspective.
2.3 Nige-Tore: A smartphone Application for Tsunami
Evacuation Drills
Nige-Tore (“逃げトレ”) means evacuation training and is a
smartphone application for tsunami evacuation drills (Sun
et al. 2017; Sugiyama and Yamori 2019). Nige-Tore is an
application that allows training participants to check both their
spatial movement and videos showing the temporal and
spatial changes of the tsunami inundation in the area
simultaneously on their smartphone screens and in
real-time during the training. Nige-Tore has three stages:
(1) initial setup and hazard map check, (2) training, and
(3) judgment and review. In the first stage, it is possible
to set the evacuation start time and confirm the tsunami
hazard map of the user’s current location. In the second
stage, participants move to the evacuation site while
checking their smartphone screens. The screen displays
the trajectory of the participants, the time to reach the
tsunami, and the depth of inundation at the current lo-
cation. When the training participant judges himself or
herself to have completed the evacuation, he or she
presses the “evacuation completion button” (from this
time, the stage moves to the third stage). The applica-
tion shows whether the exercise was a success or a
failure. In addition, the overlaid video of the movement
trajectory from the start to the completion point and the
temporal change of the tsunami inundation situation can
be viewed as a single video. Nige-Tore specializes in
tsunami evacuation drills and does not support other
types of disaster drills.
3 Utilization of Social Media at the Time
of a Disaster
It is crucial to collect, transmit, and share disaster-related in-
formation quickly and accurately is essential to minimize
damage in case of a large-scale disaster. From this viewpoint,
the use of social media, especially Twitter, during disasters is
attracting more attention recently (Imran et al. 2015; Simon
et al. 2015). For example, when the Great East Japan
Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, Twitter was actively
used as a communication tool to find information about the
tsunami, shelters, the state of public transportation services
(Peary et al. 2012; Toriumi et al. 2013; Wilensky 2014,
Uchida et al. 2015). When Hurricane Sandy hit the U.S. East
Coast in 2012, many people used Twitter to share disaster-
related information; more than 20 million tweets that included
the words “sandy,” “hurricane,” “#sandy,” and “#hurri-
cane” were posted between October 27 and November
1, 2012 (Twitter 2012). During the 10 minutes from 8
o’clock immediately after the 2018 Osaka Northern
Earthquake occurred, more than 275,000 tweets, includ-
ing the Japanese word “地震” (which means earthquake),
were posted (Yamada et al. 2018). Nishikawa et al.
(2019) showed that many tweets, including the
Japanese hashtag # 救助 (“ 救助 ” means rescue), were
posted for rescue request in 2018 Western Japan Floods.
The following text is an example of a tweet posted after the
2016 Kumamoto Earthquake struck: “There is no food or
drink at Ubuyama Junior High School. The people there are
really in trouble. Please send them food. Please help them.
They need disposable diapers because there are many se-
niors.” (which is originally written in Japanese). Tweets like
this will help not only the victims but also government agen-
cies and disaster volunteer groups to get a better understand-
ing of the situation and make the right decisions. For the
reasons noted above, many Japanese national and local gov-
ernmental agencies began to use Twitter to collect and distrib-
ute information during disasters. For example, the government
of Wako City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, decided that the
hashtag “#和光市災害” (和光市 and 災害 mean Wako City
and disaster, respectively) would be used as the official
hashtag for tweeting disaster-related information in Wako
City. The use of hashtags with the form “#(municipality
name) disaster” has been spreading to other municipalities in
Japan in recent years.

4 DITS/DIMS: Disaster Information Tweeting
and Mapping System
This system is a web application accessible by any web
browser; thus, the users do not need to install the dedicated
application. We give an overview of DITS/DIMS (Fig. 1)
developed by us (Uchida et al. 2016; Kosugi et al. 2017).
4.1 Background to the Development of DITS/DIMS
The number of tweets has been known to increase explosively
in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. For example,
BIGLOBE Inc. reported that on March 11, 2011, when the
Great East Japan Earthquake struck, nearly 33 million tweets
were posted in Japan, which is about 1.8 times the daily aver-
age. Then, to make effective use of Twitter during a disaster,
especially in its aftermath, it is desirable that tweets are acces-
sible form in various ways, for example, have geotags (longi-
tude and latitude coordinates). Geotagged tweets can be auto-
matically plotted on a digital map, which would help victims
get quick neighborhood information in the chaos of a post-
disaster situation. In addition, the tweet map allows govern-
ment agencies to quickly and intuitively recognize the needs
of affected areas and citizens. However, it is well known that
extremely few users are allowed to use location-based services
on Twitter. Then, the percentage of geotagged tweets is quite
small. If a tweet contains geo-related information, such as the
name of a landmark, it may be possible to obtain longitude
and latitude coordinate information by geocoding it after ap-
plying the geoparsing technique (Gelernter and Balaji 2013).
However, there are so many “central parks” in the world, for
example, that it’s impossible to identify a location uniquely
Fig. 1 Screenshot of the initial
page of DITS/DIMS
Inf Syst Front
from a tweet sentence by geoparsing. Based on the back-
grounds mentioned above, Uchida et al. implemented a real-
time Twitter-based disaster-related information sharing sys-
tem that supports self-, mutual-, and public help in the after-
math of a disaster (Uchida et al. 2016). The system consists of
the following two sub-systems; DITS (Disaster Information
Tweeting System) and DIMS (Disaster Information
Mapping System). The system was launched about the middle
of Feb. 2015 and generally has been operated well. Many
users have commented that DITS makes it easy to post tweets
with the address of their location and the corresponding re-
gional hashtag for disaster reporting “#(municipality name)
disaster.”
4.2 DITS: Disaster Information Tweeting System
DITS (Disaster information tweeting system; Fig. 2) enables
users to post disaster-related information on Twitter and has
the following features:
& Using location specification functions, such as the global
positioning system, the user’s current geolocation infor-
mation is acquired. Based on the acquired location infor-
mation, the street address of the user’s current location, the
hashtag of the form “#(municipality name) disaster,” and
the Military Grid Reference System code (National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency 2009) are automatically
attached to the tweet.
& In cases when the user needs to be rescued, the hashtag
#救助 (救助means rescue) can be attached to the tweet.
(Twitter Japan officially recommends using this hashtag
when a user needs to be rescued.)
Inf Syst Front
Fig. 2 Screenshot of DITS: (a) Screen for selecting options for tweets to be posted and (b) screen for entering comments and selecting a photo that has to
be attached
& A photo can be attached.
Because the information posted using DITS is also posted
on Twitter as tweets from the user’s Twitter account, it can be
used not only by users of this system but also by other disaster
victims and organizations. Figure 3 shows an example of a
tweet posted using DITS.
4.3 DIMS: Disaster Information Mapping System
As shown in Fig. 4, DIMS (Disaster information mapping
system) plot tweets posted via DITS on a map and has the
following features:
& DIMS displays a map of the most recent 30 tweets posted
using DITS within 20 km of the user’s current location.
& The map is centered on the user’s current position.
Fig. 3 An example of tweet
posted using DITS
& Depending on whether the rescue hashtag (#救助) and an
image are attached, the shape and color of the icon used to
indicate the position of the tweet change.
Since the DIMS map is centered on the user’s current po-
sition, it is possible to acquire only nearby information
efficiently.
5 Establishment of an ICT-based Disaster
Prevention and Mitigation Education
Program for Young Generation
The established education program is based on the workshop
consisting of two parts; (1) town watching using DITS (disas-
ter information Tweeting system), and (2) group discussion
 Inf Syst Front

using DIMS (disaster information mapping system). The main

objectives of this disaster education program are as follows:

& to arouse awareness of disaster prevention through town

watching,
& to learn the advantages and disadvantages of using social
media like Twitter at the time of a disaster.

The schedule of this education program is as follows (in

case that the total workshop time is 100 minutes):

1. Introduction and a short lecture on disaster prevention and

mitigation: 20 min.
2. Town watching using DITS: 45 min.
3. Group discussion using DIMS: 15 min.
4. Report of group discussion: 10 min.
5. Summary: 10 min.

In town watching, the participants post tweets with a photo

by DITS. DITS is originally a system to post disaster-related
information such as damage situations and the needs of victims
in the event of a disaster. However, in this town watching, DITS
is used as a tool for getting the awareness of places and things in
terms of disaster prevention and mitigation. When the partici-
pants find an important site or thing from the viewpoint of
disaster prevention and mitigation, for example, a dangerous
site such as steep slope and a useful thing such as a fire extin-
guisher, in town watching, they post a photo of such a place and
a thing with a comment using DITS.
After the town watching, group discussion is conducted. In
the discussion, the participants utilize DIMS to look back to
the town watching. By using DIMS, the participants can
browse the tweets posted by DITS in the town watching.
The following subjects are given to the participants;
Fig. 4 Screenshot of DIMS
1. Look back on the tweets you posted. Show your group
members the tweets you posted during town watching and

Fig. 5 A portion of the brochure on the established ICT-based disaster education program
Inf Syst Front

Table 2 Outline of workshops

conducted at six schools School location Date and time # of participants

Hadano High School July 9, 2018, 14:30 ~ 16:30 34

Hadano City
Minamigaoka Junior High School July 13, 2018, 8:45 ~ 12:35 109
Hadano City
Nishiikuta Junior High School July 17, 2018, 14:00 ~ 16:00 62
Kawasaki City
Hiratsuka Commercial High School Sept. 10, 2018, 10:50 ~ 12:50 35
Hiratsuka City
Kanazawa-Sogo High School Oct. 29, 2018, 13:35 ~ 15:25 35
Yokohama City
Fujino Junior High School Oct. 31, 2018, 13:40 ~ 15:30 51
Sagamihara City

explain what points you focused on. Moreover, give your
thoughts on what you need to be aware of in the event of a
disaster.
2. What tweets would be helpful during a disaster? What
should we pay attention to when posting a tweet on disas-
ter information? What should we pay attention to when
receiving disaster information from Twitter?
After the group discussion, the representative of each group
reports the conclusions obtained from the group discussion.
We produced a brochure on this educational program and
distributed it to all junior high and high schools (the number of
them is about 700) in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Figure 5
shows a portion of the brochure.
6 Implementation Results of the Established
Education Program at Junior High and High
Schools
6.1 Overview
We implemented the established disaster prevention and mitiga-
tion education program at several junior high and high schools in
Kanagawa Prefecture in FYs 2017 and 2018. Here we introduce
the results of them in FY 2018. We implemented the established
program at six schools (three junior high schools and three high
schools; Table 2). In town watching, we lent one tablet PC
(HUAWEI MediaPad T3 LTE model) to each group (about five
people/group) and asked the students to post tweets by DITS
(Fig. 6). Figure 7 shows examples of the tweet posted by DITS
in the town watching. The left figure of Fig. 7 is a tweet on a
storage warehouse for disaster prevention and mitigation. The
right figure of Fig. 7 is a tweet on a sign indicating 2.0 m above
sea level. Every student posted tweets at least twice. Figure 8
shows the group discussion using DIMS. Figure 9 shows an
example of a tweet displaying on DIMS.
6.2 Summary of Post-questionnaire
A post-questionnaire was carried out in each workshop (16
items). We ask participants to evaluate each question item
(Q.1 to Q.12) on a scale of one to four; 1: strongly disagree,
2: disagree, 3: agree, and 4: strongly agree.
& Q.1: Was the content of the lecture on disaster prevention
and mitigation easy to understand?
& Q.2: Was the explanation of how to use DITS/DIMS easy
to understand?
& Q.3: Did you discover new things in the town watching
from the viewpoint of disaster prevention and mitigation?
& Q.4: Did you discover new things in the group discussion
after the town watching from the viewpoint of disaster
prevention and mitigation?

Fig. 6 Tweet posting using DITS

in town watching

Fig. 7 Examples of the tweet posted by DITS in the town watching
& Q.5: Have you raised awareness of disaster prevention by
receiving today’s class?
& Q.6: Was today’s class more interesting than previous
disaster prevention and mitigation drills and/or disaster
prevention and mitigation education?
& Q.7: Did today’s class motivate you to participate in
events related to disaster prevention and mitigation?
& Q.8: Would you like to participate in the disaster
prevention and mitigation education using ICT
equipment again?
& Q.10: Do you think DITS/DIMS is easy to use?
& Q.11: Would you like to use DITS/DIMS yourself in the
future?
& Q.12: Do you think DITS/DIMS will be useful in the
event of a disaster?
& Q.13: sex
1. Male, 2. Female
& Q.14: Do you have a smartphone or a feature phone?
1. I have both., 2. I have a smartphone., 3. I have a feature
phone., 4. I don’t have both.
Fig. 8 Group discussion using
DIMS
Inf Syst Front
& Q.15: What SNS do you use on a regular basis? [Check all
that apply to you.]
1. Twitter, 2. Instagram, 3. Facebook, 4. LINE, 5.
Google+, 6. Others, 7. I don’t use SNS.
& Q.16: How to use SNS in the event of disasters? [Check all
that apply to you.]
1. When I was affected by a disaster, I posted the situa-
tion on SNS. (Text only)
2. When I was affected by a disaster, I posted the situa-
tion on SNS. (Text and photos)
3. I shared or retweeted content about disasters that
others had posted when I was affected by a disaster.
4. I shared or retweeted content about disasters that others
had posted when I wasn’t affected by a disaster.
The results of several major questions are shown below.
Figure 10 shows the results for the questions Q.3, Q.4, Q.5,
Q.6, Q.8., Q.10, Q.11, and Q.12 (reply rates for each scale). As
shown in the figure, many participants had a positive impression
on the developed ICT-based disaster prevention and mitigation
education. Below are some of the comments of participants:
& This workshop was an opportunity to think about what I
should do in the event of a disaster.
& I think it’s important to act in anticipation of a disaster on a
regular basis.
& I think this workshop should be done in other places.
& When posting information at the time of a disaster, I
would like to check the contents to post carefully.
& I would like to use social media positively to protect the
area where I live.
7 Discussion
Here, we compare the established disaster education program
with three disaster education methods stated in the second
Inf Syst Front
Fig. 9 An example of tweet displaying on DIMS
section. The purpose of DIG and Nigechizu is different from
the education program established in this study because they
do not necessarily require a town watching. DIG and
nigechizu are primarily concerned with working in groups to
write information on the map, and they will likely be able to
engage in more in-depth discussions than our program.
However, young people are expected to make new discoveries
in terms of disaster by conducting town watching rather than
just discussing it on the basis of maps. The result of Q.3 of the
post-questionnaire shows that town watching is useful for
Fig. 10 The results of the
questionnaire
disaster prevention education. DIG and Nigechizu are analog
methods using papers and pens, which makes it easy for the
elderly who are not used to using ICT devices to participate.
On the other hand, the education program developed in this
study is an ICT-based method that uses smartphones and tab-
let PCs and is considered to be effective in arousing interest in
disaster prevention and mitigation among young people who
use these devices regularly. The result of Q.8 of the post-
survey was relatively good. Nige-Tore, like the program
established in this study, can be regarded as an ICT-based
disaster prevention education. However, it is specific to tsu-
nami evacuation, and then it is difficult to apply it to disaster
education for other types of disasters. The program
established this time is not intended for a specific type of
disaster but can be used according to local conditions.
Moreover, unlike other methods, this education program will
also teach the participants the pros and cons of using social
media in the event of a disaster, which is essential for disaster
prevention and mitigation activities.
8 Conclusion
In this paper, we introduced the contents of the program on
disaster prevention and mitigation education program for the
young generation established with Kanagawa Prefecture,
Japan. The program is based on the workshop consisting of
town watching and group discussion using DITS/DIMS (di-
saster information tweeting and mapping system) proposed in
the previous studies. Moreover, we reported on the results of
the implementation of the program at several junior high and
high schools. The results of the post-questionnaire show that
many participants had a positive impression for this ICT-
based disaster education.

In the future, a detailed comparison with other disaster
education methods will be made in the future. In addition,
we would like to conduct a detailed analysis of the extent to
which awareness of disaster preparedness increased before
and after the implementation of this disaster prevention and
mitigation education.
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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdic-
tional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Osamu Uchida received his B.E degree from Meiji University, Japan, in
1995, his M. Info. Sci. degree from Japan Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology in 1997, and his Dr. Eng. degree from University of
Electro-Communications, Japan, in 2000. From 2000 to 2002, he was a
research associate at Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Japan. He joined
Tokai University, Japan, in 2002, and since 2016, he has been a Professor
in the Department of Human and Information Science at Tokai
University. His research interests include ICT for disaster risk reduction,
social media analysis, and image processing. Since 2012, he has been a
vice editor in chief of the IIEEJ (The Institute of Image Electronics
Engineers of Japan).
Sachi Tajima received her Ph.D. degree in Psychology from
Ochanomizu University, Japan, in 2016. She was an assistant professor
at Kanto Gakuen University, Japan. Currently, she is working as an asso-
ciate professor at Tokai University, Japan. Her interests include the effects
of media such as television, digital game, and the Internet on children and
youth. She is a member of the research and exchange committee at the
Japan Society of Personality Psychology.
Inf Syst Front
Yoshitaka Kajita received his B.E degree from Kyushu University,
Japan, in 1994, his M.E.degree from Kyushu University in 1996, and
his Dr. Eng. degree from Kyushu University, Japan, in 2002. From
1996 to 2011, he was a research associate at Kyushu University, Japan.
He joined Tokai University, Japan, in 2012, and since 2016, he has been a
Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Tokai University. His
research interests include disaster reduction planning using ICT.
Keisuke Utsu received his B.E. degree in 2007, M.E. degree in 2009, and
Ph.D. degree (Engineering) in 2011, from Tokai University, Japan.
Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the Department of
Communication and Network Engineering, Tokai University, Japan. His
current research topics include Social media utilization for disaster com-
munications, Information systems for disaster communications, and
Information network.
Yuji Murakami received his B.E degree from Kumamoto University,
Japan, in 1983, his M. Info. Sci. degree from Kumamoto University,
Japan in 1985, and his Dr. Eng. degree from Kumamoto University,
Japan, in 1997. From 1987 to 2003, he was a system engineer at Kozo
Keikaku Engineering Inc., Japan. He joined Kyushu-Tokai University,
Japan, in 2003, he was a Professor at Kyushu-Tokai University in 2007,
and since 2008, he has been a Professor at Tokai University. His research
interests include Application System using GIS and smartwatch, and
virtual reality.
Sanetoshi Yamada received his B.S degree from Tokai University,
Japan, in 2013, his M. Sc. degree from Tokai University in 2015, and
his Dr. Sc. degree from Tokai University, Japan, in 2018. He has been a
program researcher at Tokai University Research & Information Center,
Japan, since 2018. And he has been a technical staff at Department of
Molecular Life Science, Tokai University School of Medicine, Japan,
since 2020. His research interests include research on analysis and visu-
alization of complicated big data, for example social media data and
medical data.