Development of Real-Time Evacuation Support System (RESS) to Reduce Human Damage in Natural Disasters

In Japan, there are many natural disasters such as river flood and tsunami caused by typhoons, heavy rains and earthquakes. In this case, the residents have an evacuation time to evacuate to shelters after evacuation alerts from a governmental office. The authors reported in a previous paper the development and evaluation of the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) in order to reduce human damage in natural disasters. But, the actually required and important information to reduce human damage in a regional natural disaster was still unclear. This paper shows an evacuation time-line model and indicates that the actually required and important information in such a case are the location information of Support-required People (SRP) and supporters, and the current shelter’s detail condition. Based on this concept, we newly developed the Real-time Evacuation Support System (RESS), which can share the information on the location of SRP and supporters, and shelter conditions in real time. Further, we present a case study of the prototype system for Kamaishi City in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. We conclude that the developed system will be helpful for local residents to accurately understand the state of the SRP and supporters, and evacuation shelters and reduce the risks of human damage in natural disasters.