A discussion of damage mitigation of natural disasters: How to increase citizens' preparedness

Abstract

It is widely recognised that community-wide support and learning is important to ensure that people are adequately prepared for natural disasters. To enhance preparedness of citizens, a critical theme is how to utilise the benefit of information Communication Technology (ICT) in the scheme of ICT-based learning programmes to raise citizens' perceptions of disaster risk and how to enable citizens to be ready for the future disasters. And in so doing, collaboration with the public sector, local disaster management NPOs and other stakeholders would be important topic. However, for such training programmes to be meaningful is important that they are based on citizens' sense of urgency about all aspects of disasters and a clear understanding by policy makers of what elements should be prioritised in the programme. This study first recognises the existence of a gap between citizens' perceptions of the real and the virtual scape of natural disasters, and then, based on data from a survey of citizens' attitudes in X city in Japan, quantitatively captures the factors and elements of disasters that influence citizens' perceptions of city resilient, and suggests implications for policy makers and relevant stakeholders. The results will be presented to policy makers and stakeholders. This is expected to provide models and scales of analysis for ICT implementation in disaster prevention and mitigation, i.e. coping with natural disasters brought about by climate change.