A disaster mitigation drill using microblogging site Twitter for purposes including finding shelters and locating the injured was held on Wednesday in Tokyo’s Roppongi area.

The training, organised by Twitter’s Japanese unit, major real estate developer Mori Building Co, internet service company Yahoo Japan Corp, and others, aimed to enhance participants’ readiness to make use of social media in a disaster.

During the March 2011 crisis in northeastern Japan, a lot of information was sent out via tweets, but some of it was incorrect.

About 100 people solicited from the public participated in the drill, which was based on the scenario that the Japanese capital has been struck by a major earthquake.

The participants simultaneously received the initial report of an earthquake via a smartphone application for emergency alerts provided by Yahoo before moving to a shelter set up by Mori Building.

The training required participants to frequently check Twitter updates by Mori Building on appropriate evacuation routes and also to send out tweets on the whereabouts of the injured they encounterd.