The usefulness of "escape maps," which have been applied from building disaster prevention planning to evacuation planning during disasters.

"Evacuation Map" is a method developed by volunteers at Nikken Sekkei that visualizes evacuation times on a map.

Large-scale buildings are designed to allow for the quickest possible evacuation during disasters. This concept has now been extended to the city and urban levels.
This is an idea that could only come from Nikken Sekkei, a company that often designs large-scale buildings.
 

Creating an evacuation map is very simple. Color-code the paths on the map in 3-minute intervals (within 3 minutes, 3-6 minutes, 6-9 minutes, 9-12 minutes, 12-15 minutes, 15-18 minutes, 18-21 minutes, 21-24 minutes) to show how long it would take an elderly person to reach an evacuation site walking slowly (43m per minute).
 

Since string is used to measure distance, it can be easily created even by children. Furthermore, adjustments can be made, such as reducing walking speed to 80% when simulating nighttime, rainy weather, or snowy conditions. By writing the evacuation direction on the colored path, the shortest route becomes easier to understand.
Earthquakes cause more than just building collapses and tsunamis. Evacuation maps can be tailored to reflect the specific characteristics of each region. For example, workshops in Shimoda City and Kawazu Town in Shizuoka Prefecture, both located near the sea, considered a combined disaster involving tsunamis and landslides. In the Kuna district of Chichibu City, surrounded by mountains, an evacuation map was created to protect against landslides.

While evacuation maps can be created at Private, creating them through a workshop results in a map that is packed with information gathered from the group. Furthermore, by discussing routes and the ease of passage along roads, evacuation routes are memorized more intuitively, and information known only to local residents is shared through these discussions.
By discussing ideas—such as where to build new roads or evacuation towers needed to shorten evacuation times—participants can propose their own plans for building a disaster-resilient community. Furthermore, when people of all ages and genders living in the area come together to communicate, they can share insights into risks that might be overlooked by any single generation or gender.
By exchanging opinions across generations and professions—including volunteer firefighters, local residents, children, and adults—these workshops also serve as a communication tool for building a cooperative framework in emergencies.
Incidentally, at the workshop held in the Hirota-cho district of Rikuzentakata City, the first session was attended primarily by middle school students, who created an evacuation map. The second session was attended mainly by volunteer firefighters, who added details and made corrections to the map created by the students.Furthermore, during the third session, members of the fishing cooperative’s women’s division took the lead, adding evacuation challenges and points to note from a woman’s perspective to the evacuation map. For some people, this process reveals routes they would never have considered in their daily lives. In this way, evacuation plans are developed that incorporate the practical, firsthand knowledge of each individual who knows the town well.

Unlike passive training, creating a map based on your own feelings in a workshop helps you internalize evacuation plans as something personal, not something that happens to others. Rather than simply going through the motions of evacuation drills, the process of creating an escape map involves repeatedly simulating the evacuation route, enabling you to make safe decisions when an emergency actually occurs.
After a workshop where participants share their opinions and review evacuation plans, they acquire the literacy needed to escape. Building on this, they conduct evacuation drills in the field and reflect on the experience, developing practical evacuation plans that they can use to act in an emergency.

Evacuation maps, created by local governments and schools across Japan, are gaining increasing recognition for their practicality. They are also being used as an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of disaster prevention, which is often overlooked. In areas such as the Kuna and Kamishiraku districts of Chichibu City, a series of workshops have deepened the understanding of "evacuation maps," leading to the development of district disaster prevention plans. Each organization is developing its own unique approach to evacuation maps.
Furthermore, by programming the mechanism of the evacuation map, it can be shared on the internet. Sharing it online will gather more ideas about new routes and locations for evacuation towers. Software has also been developed to perform simulations to verify the consistency of what has been created. While maintaining consistency, data from more people will be accumulated, and it has the potential to spread from local to all of Japan. As the evacuation map has spread, its achievements have been recognized, and the Yamamoto Laboratory of Meiji University, the Kinoshita Laboratory of Chiba University, and the Nikken Sekkei Volunteer Club, who were involved in holding evacuation map creation workshops, jointly received the Architectural Institute of Japan Award in 2018. Their award was given for "Promoting intergenerational and inter-regional risk communication through evacuation map creation," for leading to disaster prevention town planning centered on local residents, and for attracting the interest of a wide range of people and broadening the base of local disaster prevention efforts.
The "Escape Map," originally created by volunteers at Nikken Sekkei from their architectural disaster prevention planning, has gained recognition for its practicality. As a result, it has gradually expanded beyond the initial members' control, and requests for workshops have been pouring in from all over Japan, with people saying, "We want to make one too!" and "We want you to hold a workshop!" It has also attracted attention from experts in maps and disaster prevention. From the perspective of "creating cities that protect lives," the "Escape Map" initiative continues to spread throughout Japan.