The Great East Japan Earthquake not only caused damage to individual local organizations (governments, companies, hospitals, universities, etc.) but also resulted in municipalities getting lost and the continuity of communities becoming threatened. Particularly, there were “unexpected” cases where people fell victim to the disaster while they were in schools, which were believed to be safe places, leaving many students, teachers, parents and local residents dead. It is our sincere wish that the lessons learnt from this disaster will be put into practice in the future, so that people can develop the ability to judge the situation appropriately and act accordingly to take necessary action to survive even if faced with an unexpected situation.
There are many possible “hardware” and “software” measures to this end. After all, however, the key is to develop human resources who can make effective use of, promote, and give instructions on, them.
Realistic disaster situations can be reproduced using 3D-VR (three-dimensional virtual reality) and audio equipment to allow training participants to simulate disaster conditions.
Participants can learn and develop the knowledge and skills required to make advanced situation assessments and take appropriate action through actually taking action while looking at 3D-VR images displayed by the system. Disaster situation images are shown on three 80-inch screens using 3D-VR.　The narrator guides the behavior of participants. Participants move their bodies to make appropriate responses while looking at the images. The operator switches between different scenarios according to the behavior of participants to present them with unexpected situations.