Spatial mismatch in school disaster risk reduction: Insights from a Nationwide survey in Japan

Schools play a critical role in disaster risk reduction (DRR), particularly in hazard-prone countries such as Japan, where school safety management is increasingly expected to reflect local hazard characteristics. However, little is known about the spatial scales at which such characteristics are recognized and incorporated into school disaster management. Based on a nationwide questionnaire survey of boards of education in Japan, this study examines the spatial mismatch between school-centered safety management and area-based disaster risks extending across school attendance zones and living environments. The findings reveal that local characteristics are primarily understood in relation to school locations, hazard zones, and evacuation sites. In contrast, limited attention is paid to broader area-based risks such as commuting routes, land use, local resources, and student handover conditions. Understanding regional characteristics in school DRR relies heavily on local disaster management plans and paper-based hazard maps, whereas institutional support for GIS integration and Web-GIS use remains limited. More than half of the boards of education reported that they do not provide disaster-related teacher training. These findings suggest that the key challenge in school DRR lies not merely in limited access to geographic information or low GIS use, but in the lack of institutional capacity to interpret and operationalize multi-scalar disaster risks within school disaster management and evacuation planning. The study argues that GIS and map-based approaches should be repositioned not simply as ICT tools, but as frameworks for shifting school disaster management toward area-based disaster governance encompassing school attendance zones and local communities.