A Mobile Application for Earthquake Education Targeting Foreigners Intending to Visit Japan

Japan is in the Pacific Rim Seismic Belt, and earthquakes happen frequently. Foreigners who lack the necessary earthquake knowledge and escape skills may not survive strong earthquakes in Japan. Therefore, it is essential to provide earthquake education to these foreigners. Since rich-formed earthquake education has been available for foreigners living in Japan, this research works to improve the earthquake education situation for foreigners who intend to visit Japan. Receiving earthquake education in advance helps enhance foreigners’ earthquake risk awareness, gain more opportunities to master earthquake survival knowledge, and build earthquake survival confidence. This paper proposed a learning model called ‘FOE+G’ to achieve this research goal. ‘FOE’ means the frequency of occurrence of earthquakes in Japan, and ‘G’ means gamification. A prototype system in the form of a cross-platform application has been developed to confirm that the learning model improves earthquake education for the target audience. The application delivers an earthquake notification to target objects each time an eligible earthquake occurs in Japan. The High-frequency earthquakes in Japan lead to relatively frequent updates, which enable users to build earthquake awareness, realise the importance of earthquake education, and participate more actively in it. Furthermore, gamification is employed in the application to prompt participation in earthquake education.