**3. Methods**

#### **3.1 Outline of the survey**

As the method of this research, we used the implementation of questionnaire surveys for Japanese local governments nationwide and their statistical analysis.

In this study, the authors created a questionnaire in Excel and sent it by e-mail to the departments in charge of disaster prevention in local governments. **Table 1** shows the outline of the survey, and the number of valid answers is 346.

**Table 2** shows the composition of the questionnaire. Most of them are multiplechoice, but some questions are descriptive. The contents of the survey can be roughly divided into four. The first is the proactive measures for the shelter management under COVID-19. In order to clarify what kind of measures are being taken by each local government in Japan, we have set up questions asking about the creation of shelter management manuals that incorporate infectious disease countermeasures, the implementation of training, and the addition of shelters. The second is the actual shelter management under COVID-19 in entire municipality. For local governments that have experience in opening shelters under COVID-19, we set up questions asking about the provision of evacuation information and the acceptance of support staff. The third is the actual shelter management under COVID-19 at each shelter. In order to clarify the infection countermeasures taken at the shelters and their issues, we set up questions asking about the specific contents of infectious disease countermeasures, how to grasp evacuees at home, and difficult tasks. The fourth is the attributes of the respondents. Questions were set up asking the name of the municipality, population size, name of the department in charge, title of the person in charge, and experience of opening shelters.

#### *Science-Based Approaches to Respond to COVID and Other Public Health Threats*


#### **Table 1.**

*Outline of the survey.*

Proactive measures for shelter management under COVID-19


Actual shelter management under COVID-19 (for the entire municipality)


Actual shelter management under COVID-19 (for each shelter)

Following the above, we asked the following questions for each shelter opened.

4.**Shelter name**: Request a descriptive answer to the question "Please tell me the name of the shelter."


#### Attributes

• **City name**: Request a written response with the name of the prefecture and the name of the city.


#### **Table 2.**

*Composition of the questionnaire.*

**Figure 1.** *Distribution of the population size.*

#### **Figure 2.**

*Experience of opening a shelter under COVID-19.*

The structure of this paper is as follows. Chapter 4 shows the proactive measures for the shelter management under COVID-19, and the following Chapter 5 shows the actual shelter management under COVID-19. Based on the above, Chapter 6 considers how shelters should be operated under COVID-19. Finally, Chapter 7 describes the limitations and prospects of this research.
