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Abstract

Since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, each municipality in coastal areas has constructed and designated a lot of Tsunami Evacuation Buildings (TEB), the sites for secure physical safety under tsunami threat. The total number of them in Japan is more than 15,000 at present. The municipalities have concurrently developed tsunami hazard maps and evacuation signs to inform people of their locations. However, previous surveys point out the low awareness of their locations among people, especially visitors. Therefore, those who should quickly evacuate from the tsunami cannot decide their destination smoothly. In particular, the popular touristic sites along the coastal area require a solution to guide visitors who are not familiar with the TEB. It is necessary to highlight their locations intuitively to complete evacuation as soon as possible. For this reason, this study examines the use of balloon-type evacuation signs as visual information to lead people within a wide area to the sites before the tsunami arrives. This study consists of experiments in real space and virtual space. In real space, we set up balloon-type evacuation signs with different design and delimit the area for which the balloons can be seen. On the other hand, in the virtual space, we measure the evacuation time and the people trajectory with and without the presence of these signs. Through these experiments, we could evaluate the social implementation value of tsunami evacuation guidance with balloon-type evacuation signs.