Can technology improve tsunami preparedness? This study presents a smartphone and tablet application designed to enhance tsunami evacuation training. The researchers evaluate the application's effectiveness using a tsunami evacuation training simulator and conduct an experiment in Nishio City. The results show that participants quickly grasp attention targets near them but struggle with distant ones. This suggests that repetitive training focusing on distant objects is crucial for effective evacuation. These findings have implications for the design of evacuation training programs and the development of technology-based tools to improve community resilience. By understanding how people perceive and respond to evacuation information, authorities can create more effective training methods and improve community preparedness for future tsunamis. We found that the subjects were able to quickly grasp the attention targets that were present near them but had difficulty grasping attention targets that were far away.
Published in Geosciences, this article fits the journal's scope by focusing on natural hazards and disaster preparedness. The development and evaluation of a tsunami evacuation training application contributes directly to the journal's content on improving community resilience and mitigating the impact of geological disasters.