Development of a smartphone application for disaster response

The Japanese National Police Agency report confirmed 15,883 deaths, 6,145 injured, and 2,667 people missing by 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami. Even though Japan had a well-prepared tsunami warning system, unpredictable size of wave and short evacuation time (the first tsunami arrival time was only 25 minutes) brought many casualties. So, information system for emergency response has been a great concern of policy makers to reduce damages from tsunami. Meanwhile, a smartphone is useful for disaster response because of its mobility and information communicability. Evacuees can receive real- time disaster information which helps to make an evacuation judgment. Especially, over 30 million are using smartphones in South Korea, so it is necessary to use a smartphone as a disaster information delivering device. In this study, a smartphone application (app) is developed to reduce damage of human life from tsunami.