Design and Implementation of Community-based Hazard Mapping Support System for Traditional Towns with Local Heritage

This paper describes the design and trial development of a system that supports continuous hazard mapping by local residents in their daily life. We performed an interview survey to design our system in a model traditional town in Saga Prefecture, Japan. The results show that despite continued efforts, many practical problems remain and residents feel unsafe. Considering these results, we designed and developed a unique information and communication technology-based support system that contributes to community-based disaster prevention and reduction. The continuous resident participation and posting design are the core concept for our community-based approach. Our system continues to support making a hazard map by integrating the community-based hazard information. Local residents register information (disaster types, risk level, photographs, comments, positional information) about locations that could be dangerous in a disaster. In addition, our system enables information sharing through a Web server. We expect that this information sharing will allow local hazard information for each district to be used.