Systematization and Sharing of Disaster Management Literacy by DMLH

Abstract

The concept we propose for a disaster management literacy hub (DMLH) involves systemizing and generalizing disaster management literacy (DML) and discussing how to design such a DMLH where the general public and disaster responders share materials on DML. In the early 21stcentury, measures against large-scale earthquakes should essentially include both hardware disaster mitigation measures like the construction of appropriate structures and software measures like disaster preparedness among people and organizations such as the general public, disaster responders and related organizations. We define knowledge about disaster response management and competency as DML. Our analysis of documents on the incident command system (ICS), an emergency response system under the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), found 56 positions of disaster responders in ICS defined by 35 actions required for four types of disaster response competency. The above analysis led us to propose that DML consist of three elements: knowledge for learning about disaster management and mitigation, skills required for effective disaster response, and basic competency and attitudes for coping with disasters. For conceptual DMLH design based on the Instructional Design (ID), we propose three types of learning:1 The general public and disaster responders learn audiovisually using training videos and materials and review tests on learn from videos.2 People who want to provide education and training at schools or in regions or municipalities with school teacher guidance/teaching plans learn how to do so.3 People learn DML by posting or searching for (collecting and arranging) materials.We discuss how to publish such learning programs, taking as a specific example a life reconstruction support system (to put disaster victims’ lives back in order) based on victims’ master database.