The Potential of Digitally Enabled Disaster Education for Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

A sustainable and resilient local community requires a learning culture that allows them to evolve over time. Disaster education in this context is expected to be an important element for local communities. Conventionally, disaster education in Japan is provided in elementary and junior high school as an evacuation drill. After that age, the attachment with the local community becomes relatively low, which we call the black box of disaster education. This paper reports on a practical research project in Muroran City, Japan. It aimed to use digital technology to involve high school students in a disaster education program. Officials in Muroran City have been struggling with collecting young people to participate in a community leader development program for disaster risk reduction (DRR). The research project employed a cloud-based learning platform in order to appeal to high school students. A set of three workshops was conducted from November to December 2021. Three out of the five categories of DRR consciousness increased after the workshop, namely, imagination, mutual aid and interest. We observed that participants’ mindsets and behaviors changed during the workshop activities. Digital technology can contribute to context-specific disaster risk education, which we believe is important in designing a sustainable and resilient local community for the 2030s.