Abstract:

The threat of natural disasters such as torrential rain and massive flood is increasing year by year. Special rainfall warnings, which are issued once every few decades, are issued every year. These situations are not limited to Japan. Large-scale natural disasters caused by climate change events occur frequently around the world. In September 2022, Pakistan experienced more than 5.5 times the average rainfall of the past 30 years, flooding one-third of the country. This has claimed more than 1,000 lives, and about 500,000 people have been evacuated to rescue camps. In the United States, rain continued to fall for two weeks from late July, causing a flood that was said to occur only once in 1,000 years, mainly in Kentucky. In natural disasters caused by climate change and disasters caused by huge earthquakes and tsunamis, it is inevitable that the evacuation period will be prolonged.

Pandemics such as COVID-19 make evacuation behavior during a disaster and long-term shelter living difficult. An infectious explosion such as a pandemic limits human contact for an extended period of time. Therefore, evacuees difficult to live in close proximity to each other in order to prevent infectious diseases. This limitation cannot be avoided even in the case of living in an evacuation life during a disaster such as a torrential rain or earthquake. Additionally, the disaster has cut off the cell phone communication network, and the information and communication environment in evacuation centers is generally inadequate at the time of the disaster. Many people who are evacuated must share the temporary Wi-Fi set up at the evacuation center.

Due to changes in the phase of evacuation and the prolonged evacuation life, the proportion of daily life such as resuming studying in the evacuation life gradually increases. This "daily life under the non-daily life" will continue until they leave the evacuation center. As daily life resumes, learning activities also resume. The current e-learning environment is built on the premise of a high-speed and low-latency communication environment that allows for constant communication. Continuing e-learning in an inadequate communication environment, such as a evacuation center is difficult. It is also difficult for learners to study in close proximity to each other cause of prevent infectious diseases.

In this study, we developed a distributed asynchronous learning support framework for operation in complex disaster situations, which are becoming larger and more complex. We implemented a function-limited LMS service specialized for learners during evacuation on a power-saving IoT device. This IoT device also has Wi-Fi functionality and acts as an access point for learners during evacuation. In addition, the IoT device functions as an edge device integrating a function-limited version of LMS and a communication status monitor. The device creates a learning support environment that covers a wide area within the evacuation center by supporting mesh Wi-Fi functionality. We aim to support the continuous use of e-learning in “daily life under the non-daily life” from the middle to the end of evacuation shelter life.In particular, we explain how the learning history is maintained among distributed IoT devices and verify the effectiveness of the mechanism.

Keywords:

e-learning, disaster reduction for learners, edge computing, continuation of learning, blockchain.