Development of Training System for Building Damage Assessment Using Actual Buildings

Buildings are checked after disasters for such diverse factors as building safety, disaster victim relief application and insurance claim payment. Visual evaluation by different inspectors used in these types of inspection to ascertain and assess the extent of damage tends to lead to variations in results. Fairness is especially called for in the inspection of building damage for victim relief conducted by local government officials, because results are one criterion for providing access to relief programs for such victims. Japan’s revised Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act clearly stipulates that local governments must train inspectors in damage assessment during normal times, usually once a year at most. This training has consisted mainly of studying inspection criteria and procedures in the context of classroom lectures. Problems have been pointed out with this training, e.g., that trainees acquire knowledge on building damage inspection but have little opportunity for gaining practical learning experience. This paper describes the training system we developed based on learning experience in which the trainee experiences the procedural flow of assessing an entire actual building. As the first step, a detailed inspection was done on a house in Ojiya, Niigata prefecture, which was damaged in the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu earthquake. The condition of the house was checked and the records were incorporated into a database. Inspection records were then analyzed and assessed using assessment criteria for damage certification provided by the Japanese government’s Cabinet Office and established as detailed model solutions. Records of damage status and model solutions were input to tablet PCs and building damaged conditions reconstructed. In practical training sessions, trainees used these tablet PCs to inspect damage to different parts of the building, input results, and compared their own assessment results to model solutions. This system was used in training programs conducted for local government officials and its effectiveness discussed. The learning process involved in training was thus implemented so that trainees acquired knowledge, experienced the procedural flow of damage assessment using an actual building, and compared their results to detailed model solutions to identify their errors and examine causes.