School Disaster Resilience Assessment: An Assessment Tool

Past researches indicate that school disaster management needs to consider various aspects, and there is need for a comprehensive assessment tool. School Disaster Resilience Assessment (SDRA) is a tool to assess the resilience in a comprehensive way and to link it to decision making. This chapter highlights the application of SDRA to public schools in Kesennuma City with the following purposes: (1) to understand the resilience of school against disasters, (2) to identify the process of proposing activities for enhancing school disaster resilience based on the results of SDRA, and (3) to understand the tendencies of proposed activities. According to the results of SDRA, schools are expected to make sufficient relationship with parents and the community for enhancing school disaster resilience. Activities for enhancing disaster resilience of each school were proposed through consultation with teachers, the Board of Education in Kesennuma City, a university, and an NGO. Other schools, family, community, and community-related organizations are included in the many proposed activities. SDRA can be used for capacity development of school teachers and government officers. In addition, SDRA can support PDCA (plan-do-check-action) cycle with scientific quantitative data so that schools review and improve their own conditions.