8th International Symposium on Natural and Technological Hazards, Tokushima, Japan, May21-25,2000
The use of WWW for better understanding of heavy rainfall information in Japan.
Motoyuki Ushiyama (Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto Univ.)
In recent years, many meteorological information became shown by TV, Cable TV, Internet, and other. However, the people don't understand basic items well. For example when doing questionnaire investigation about rainfall information for about 500 undergraduate students, the following results were obtained.
1) When asking about rainfall unit, about 70 % of students answered right with "mm". However, remaining students answered with "ml".
2) Most of the students have experience of temperature observation. On the other hand, the students who had the experience of the rainfall observation were about 10 % only.
3) When asking about warning hourly precipitation, about 50 % of students answered in more than 100 mm/h value. In case of Japan, more little precipitation must be warned.
There is possibility that rainfall information is not effectively utilized as far as it is such actual state. It is important that meaning of rainfall information is explained. There are some methods but to use Internet is one of the good methods. So I made the WWW which can refer to basic rainfall information simply from this viewpoint. Following information is shown in this WWW(../).
1) Definition of precipitation
2) Basic information of heavy rainfall disaster
3) Explanation of rainfall observation system in Japan
4) Precipitation records of each place in Japan(about 1300 weather stations)
Maximum hourly and daily precipitation
Mean monthly precipitation
This WWW can read not only with WWW Browser, but also with portable phone (correspond to Internet). Therefore, it is possible to read to be moving by the car and train, too.
Recently two years, the number of reference person of Top page of this WWW is 30 to 40 per day. And the number of reference persons of precipitation records of each place in Japan is 5 to 10 per day. By the way, the reference persons by the portable phone were about 10 % of all persons. These numbers of reference person change every day, but aren't decreased.
It follows from what has been said that when servicing basic information about heavy rainfall, a continuous user is gotten. One can safely state that it is useful for the improvement of the understanding about heavy rainfall of the people in the long term. It wants to continue observation and improvement of the information contents in the future. Now this WWW is mainly written in Japanese. However, recently as for the precipitation record, it plans to write in English.
M.Ushiyama Top Page:-> disaster-i.net
E-mail:-> Here