Author(s): Terunori Ohmoto; Naoki Yamashita
Linked Author(s): Terunori Ohmoto
Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: The measures against flood disasters to reduce flood damages can be categorized two types i.e. 1) construction and operation of preventive public infrastructures as hardware-like aspect and 2) evacuation activities by local people from flood inundation as software-like aspect. Latter one is important measure if exceedance probable floods occur. Ohmoto et. al. (2008) carried out questionnaire survey on people flooded by July 2006 flood in Sendai river basin and categorized the respondents as evacuated and no-evacuated people. They statistically studied primary factors to motivate evacuation activities by use of the categorized data. Their analysis of evacuation activities by pro-bit model clarified people who got disaster information by themselves easily evacuate, and people who got the information from community also had the motivation. However, public assistance had relatively less effect on the activities. The study probed the importance of self- and community- assistances for the evacuation activities as recently often pointed out. If flood inundated area are divided as upstream basin and downstream basin, the latter one has safe advantages of 1) less locations of steep slope and 2) long lead time of floods. Safety against flood in downstream basin increases if flood control dam locates in upper stream. However, many people living in the downstream do not understand precisely the benefit of flood control dam and do not use its function efficiently. For example, Ohmoto interviewed people living in downstream of Ichifusa dam which dam controlled a large flood in Kuma river system, Kumamoto prefecture in July 1965. The interview results showed the function of Ichifusa dam was not well understood and a rumor: the dam was growing worse the flood disaster, was widely believed among the local people. Many studies on evacuation activities for flood disasters have been carried out but few studies focused on flooded local people. The impacts of flood control dam on understand of flood disaster and evacuation activities by flooded people are also not studied enough. In this paper, we analyzed impacts of flood control dam existence on understanding of flood disaster and evacuation activities by flooded people in both upstream and downstream basins through review of the questionnaire survey results.
Year: 2012