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Introduction

Satoko Oki is a researcher of communication in disaster science, seismology, and disaster education. Her work involves the development of disaster education materials for schools and other public facilities and organizations, as well as the development of disaster prevention actions for the community.

Achievements

■ Development of Disaster Education Materials:
A narrative approach called “disaster prevention novels” was developed as a way of communicating risks involving uncertainty. The “disaster prevention novel,” a story of one's own survival through a disaster, served as a simulation of the disaster for individual students and fostered their attitude to consider better disaster prevention behavior. By describing their own firm survival after the disaster, the students recognized anew that they are living in the irreplaceable “now” together with their peers, and became more proactive in dealing with their daily lives.
We have also developed “Realistic Disaster Prevention Training” that teachers can use to identify problems and find solutions in their own schools.
By introducing the “aftershocks, power outages, and injuries and illnesses” that would normally have a high probability of occurring into the evacuation drills, which had become a mere measurement of the time required for “disaster occurrence → under the desk → gathering in the school yard,” through narrative or acting, teachers began to consider the weaknesses and strengths of their school in the event of a disaster, and were able to proactively assign situations such as “What if the members of this school year were in a different situation, or what if the time of disaster occurrence was different? They were able to proactively assign situations such as, “What if it were a member of this year's class?"

■ Communication in Disaster Science
Lessons on natural phenomena such as earthquakes and heavy rainfall are communicated in a social constructivist manner. In the existing science education, earthquakes and rainfall which are a part of the activity of the whole earth system are partially cut out and explained with the objectivity of the logical proof. Instead of such a method, we conducted a class in which students can generate their own meanings by narrating the workings of the entire earth system while questioning the relationship between the phenomena and themselves.
The majority of the students were able to accept that natural phenomena are caused by the entire global system, that humans cannot stop them, and that they, as borrowers from the earth, should be prepared and take shelter.

Areas of Research

・Development of Disaster Education Materials
・Communication in Disaster Science

Social Contributions

Our research provided a tool to personalize disasters by eliciting narratives that can only be told by people living off the land's bounty. The richness of these people's words also compensates for the uncertainty of disaster science and the diversity of damage estimates. As a whole, the research contributes to restoring people's independence, which had been lost due to the perception that “only experts can talk about disasters” or “experts will solve the problems for us".
Video

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