Great East Japan Earthquake, JR East Mitigation Successes, and Lessons for California High-Speed Rail, MTI Report 12-37

California and Japan both experience frequent seismic activity, which is often damaging to infrastructure. Seismologists have developed systems for detecting and analyzing earthquakes in real-time. JR East has developed systems to mitigate the damage to their facilities and personnel, including an early earthquake detection system, retrofitting of existing facilities for seismic safety, development of more seismically resistant designs for new facilities, and earthquake response training and exercises for staff members. These systems demonstrated their value in the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and have been further developed based on that experience. Researchers in California are developing an earthquake early warning system for the state, and the private sector has seismic sensors in place. These technologies could contribute to the safety of the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s developing system, which could emulate the best practices demonstrated in Japan in the construction of the Los Angeles-to-San Jose segment

Effective Planning for Seismic Risk: Case of Kobe, Japan

This thesis discusses the city of Kobe’s recovery from the Great Hanshin Earthquake from the perspective of city planning. The earthquake and fire devastated many established parts of the city, impacting housing, businesses, and community institutions, resulting in a need for coordinated planning of of rebuilding. The purpose of this research is to investigate effective planning techniques for seismic risk, using Kobe, Japan as a case study. My research examines a neighborhood where a new plan was developed after the earthquake. It also describes how Kobe is dealing with the massive loss of housing and town resources. After this devastating earthquake, people in Kobe tried to have new urban districts which have wider roads, more open spaces, and fire proof buildings

The Impact of Natural and Manmade Disasters on Household Welfare

In this paper, we provide selective evidence on the impact of natural and manmade disasters on household welfare. First, we consider ex ante risk management and ex post risk-coping behaviors separately, showing evidence from the Asian economic crisis, earthquakes, and tsunami disasters. Second, we differentiate idiosyncratic risks which can be diversified away through mutual insurance from non-diversifiable aggregate risks which characterize a disaster. We also discuss the difficulties of designing index-type insurance against natural disasters, which are often rare, unforeseen events. Then, we investigate the role of self-insurance against large-scale disasters under which formal or informal mutual insurance mechanisms are largely ineffective. Credit accessibility is identified as one of the key factors facilitating risk-coping strategies. We also discuss public policy issues of emergency aid after disasters.Consumer/Household Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

学校施設の防災機能の向上のために 「避難所となる学校施設の防災機能に関する調査研究」報告書【英訳版】

Chapter 1 Condition of school facilities designated as emergency evacuation site.. ……………1　1. Necessity to enhance disaster prevention capability at school facilities……………1　2. Evacuation sites from a legal standpoint……………………………………………………………3Chapter 2 Current disaster prevention capabilities and conditions of the school facilities designated asevacuation sites………………………………4　1. Past issues regarding disaster prevention capabilities at school facilities during major disasters……………4　(1) Concerns with the safety of the facilities　(2) Concerns about necessary capabilities for evacuation facilities　(3) Concerns about how to operate the evacuation site　(4) Concerns about the prompt restart of educational activities in the schools2. Understanding the current condition of disaster prevention capability of school facilities and equipment ………………11　(1) Summary of the Inquiry survey　(2) Result of the survey on disaster prevention capability at school facilities　(3) Result of the survey on projecting and designing school facilities to support the community by serving as evacuation sitesChapter 3 Measures to enhance the disaster prevention capability at school facilities utilized as evacuation facilities ……………………………17　1. Basic concept ..……………17　2. Specific measures for the enhancement of disaster prevention capabilities at school facilities …18　(1) Ensuring of seismic resisting facilities　(2) Necessary functions and capabilities for an evacuation facility　(3) Establishing operational measures for evacuation facility　(4) Prompt restart of educational activities in the school　3. Promoting measures to enhance disaster prevention capability for school facilities ..………26　(1) Exploitation of various fiscal support systems　(2) Improvement of disaster prevention capabilities simultaneously with either the initial or expanding construction or large-scale rehabilitation　(3) Providing information of exemplary advanced project　(4) Understanding the condition of disaster prevention capabilitiesChapter 4 Example of a project that enhances disaster prevention capability that can also be used as an educational activity………………29　1. Example of a project for enhancing disaster prevention capabilities (Facility) ……………30　2. Example of a project for enhancing disaster prevention capabilities (Operation) …………38References　Part 1　 I School facilities utilized as evacuation sites for the Noto Peninsula Earthquake………43　II School facilities utilized as evacuation sites for the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake ………………55Part 2 Reference materia

Temporary Ruins: Miyamoto Ryūji's Architectural Photography in Postmodern Japan

This dissertation focuses on the acclaimed Japanese photographer Miyamoto Ryūji (b. 1947), whose work deals with a range of structures and spaces that I describe as ruinous: demolition sites that document the incessant development of Tokyo in the 1980s; man-made shelters of the urban homeless; the ungoverned Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong; Kobe after the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake; pinhole photographs of the late-modern Japanese urbanscape; and, most recently, the Tōhoku region after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. This project intersects an architectural and urban history of postwar Japan with the close visual analysis of Miyamoto’s photographs to show how images of ruins have served as a visual trope to challenge modernist narratives of progress and late-capitalist development. Second, I argue that these images connect multiple layers of trauma in the contemporary Japanese experience, illuminating the relationship between memory and image essential for an understanding of the role of photography in narrations of history. By examining this relationship, I clarify the ways in which postwar history has been narrated in Japan and how certain images (and the memories they spark) complicate the official narrative. Miyamoto Ryūji’s work is a compelling example of the ruin as a key theme in postwar and contemporary Japanese photography because of the diverse social and historical issues that converge in his work: urban planning, the commodification of architecture, historical preservation, natural and man-made disasters, homelessness, and, uniting all of these concerns, memory and its relationship to history. Outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, images of ruins are an underexplored way of understanding and documenting memory in Japan. Throughout the dissertation, I unearth the ruin as a central motif of postwar and contemporary Japanese photography in spite of widespread claims that Japan is a country without ruins. In doing so, I propose new ways of understanding the ruin that are specific to modern Japanese history and culture

Older survivors of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake five years on: Implications for a future model of an ageing society with Japanese values.

This thesis, an exploratory study, grew out of a concern for an ageing society in the economic stagnation experienced in Japan. Taking Kobe as a case study, the thesis reports social science research on elderly people in urban areas who are poor and have no functioning family. It is a group that will be of increasing concern in the future in Japan and many other countries. My study population lost homes in the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe, Japan, and were repeatedly relocated to various types of housing schemes in the following years. By looking at the highly age biased community of Kasetsu (temporary shelter housing: TSH) created after the Kobe Earthquake and the following stage of Fukk? Jutaku (public reconstruction housing: PRH), this research follows the processes of reconstruction for older people after the earthquake with special reference to housing and community work. The research was based primarily upon media analysis, the Hyogo Health Survey, and ethnographic research at selected temporary shelter housings and public reconstruction housing compounds in central and suburban Kobe. I used a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The media is an important part of my research in the Japanese context. By doing secondary analysis of the Hyogo survey data, this thesis describes the changes that the different surveys show. By sampling the media, I show the main foci of public attention, how their views changed and how what they emphasised or presented changed. Older people, especially older people living alone, received considerable attention. I have also sampled three sites in terms of what was happening on the ground and conducted discourse analysis. This thesis shows how one set of myths about TSH was only partly true and how PRH are far from simple solutions to the problem of rehousing survivors. Case studies of the media's presentation of evidence of loneliness and Kodukushi (isolated deaths) have shown how these things are built up from very little into new facts and new aspects of culture. Gender perspectives were employed in all analyses. A gender focus was lacking in public surveys, yet gender was important in qualitative analysis in the media and field sites. The conclusions drawn from this evidence are that disasters are long drawn out events for vulnerable older people, especially those without money or families. Official statistics and the media make their own interpretations of what is going on, and the workers on the ground reproduce many of these views and some old prejudices of their own. Policy implications of this study's findings are considered. Methodology are examined and future research needs discussed

Mortality in the l'aquila (central Italy) earthquake of 6 april 2009.

This paper presents the results of an analysis of data on mortality in the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that struck the central Italian city and province of L'Aquila during the night of 6 April 2009. The aim is to create a profile of the deaths in terms of age, gender, location, behaviour during the tremors, and other aspects. This could help predict the pattern of casualties and priorities for protection in future earthquakes. To establish a basis for analysis, the literature on seismic mortality is surveyed. The conclusions of previous studies are synthesised regarding patterns of mortality, entrapment, survival times, self-protective behaviour, gender and age. These factors are investigated for the data set covering the 308 fatalities in the L'Aquila earthquake, with help from interview data on behavioural factors obtained from 250 survivors. In this data set, there is a strong bias towards victimisation of young people, the elderly and women. Part of this can be explained by geographical factors regarding building performance: the rest of the explanation refers to the vulnerability of the elderly and the relationship between perception and action among female victims, who tend to be more fatalistic than men and thus did not abandon their homes between a major foreshock and the main shock of the earthquake, three hours later. In terms of casualties, earthquakes commonly discriminate against the elderly and women. Age and gender biases need further investigation and should be taken into account in seismic mitigation initiatives