Development and Verification of Training Method to Heighten Ability to Act Flexibly in Irregular Situations

There were no casualties to passengers in the Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami thanks to individual JR East employees foreseeing risks in the various situations they faced, making decisions flexibly, and guiding evacuation. At the same time, personnel today have fewer experiences in serious accidents and dangerous situations not limited to just disasters such as earthquakes, so the authors are concerned about the ability to respond in irregular situations. The authors thus developed a training method to enhance ability to foresee specific risks and decide what to do. In this, scenarios are used where details on irregular situations are not provided, and participants hold group discussions after imagining what they should do. As a result, the authors gained training effects by this method such as “training details being memorable for participants” and “participants recalling irregular situations after training.”