Disaster Scope

Author(s)
Oliva, E. and George, M.
Pages
15 pp
Date published
31 Aug 2019
Type
Programme/project reviews
Keywords
Disaster preparedness, resilience and risk reduction, Technological, Training
Countries
Japan

Disaster Scope is an augmented reality (AR) application which contains flooding and fire smoke simulations built by Itamiya laboratory, an organisation lead by Dr Tomoki Itamiya, a professor at Aichi University of Technology (Japan). Itamiya laboratory specialise in image processing and computer graphics technology, and have been working in the immersive technologies space for the last ten years.

Disaster Scope can superimpose a virtual disaster situation such as flooding with debris and smoke in the actual scene where the user is located, by using a smartphone and low-cost paper viewer. With the aim of improving awareness and people’s understanding of disaster risk, the Disaster Scope has been used alongside a one hour DRR lecture in evacuation drills organized by public schools and municipalities in Japan. With an estimated time of three minutes per user experience, up to 500 school students can be trained per day by using a total of ten smartphone + AR viewer kits which are available for purchase or rental from the Lab.