Japan: Improving the nation’s resilience to disasters

Source(s): Japan Times Ltd., the

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The government recently compiled an emergency three-year program worth ¥7 trillion to fix vulnerabilities in key infrastructure such as river embankments, roads and bridges, airports and power facilities to make them more resilient against big disasters. These efforts — which had been delayed as the government’s public works spending was trimmed — are indeed necessary. But priorities need to be set on projects that require urgent action so that the government’s limited financial resources can be used as efficiently as possible. Improvement must be made not only to physical infrastructure but also to operational aspects of the anti-disaster efforts — such as better communications and sharing of information with local residents to enable timely evacuations — to mitigate the impact of disasters.

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Making key infrastructure more resilient against natural disasters will be crucial, particularly in areas where serious damage is feared. Priorities need to be set, however, so the infrastructures and facilities that are most urgently in need of upgrades can be quickly fixed. That is essential since the government’s fiscal resources are limited, as is manpower. Questions have already been raised as to whether all the work can be carried out within three years in the face of the construction industry’s severe labor shortage.

The effort to beef up infrastructure to better withstand disasters has limits; therefore it must be accompanied by efforts to improve the operation of anti-disaster systems. When torrential rains struck western Japan in July, many of the landslides and floods that caused a large numbers of fatalities happened in areas that had long been identified as being at risk for such damage. Nonetheless, the forecasts of heavy rainfall hitting the risk areas did not lead to the timely evacuation of many residents and as a result a large number of them died. Mechanisms to quickly share disaster information with residents, and to prompt and assist them to safely evacuate, must be implemented or improved.

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Hazards Flood
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