Risk Management Failure Of Japan Earthquake

For dealing with the adverse impact of natural disasters every country keeps a disaster management which is responsible to mitigate the impact with rigorous preparedness. It incorporates a number of private sectors, communities, volunteers and individuals from governmental and non-governmental organisations. In this case, Japan had witnessed a catastrophic natural calamity during 2011 which crippled the normal life of Japan with heavy loss of property and life (Olson and Wu 2015). In response to this a pertinent question arises in regards to the role of risk management. In order to get an advance alarm of the natural calamity, it is the responsibility of the risk management to estimate the fatality of the disaster and reduce damage. Therefore, the essay is going to discuss about the efficiency of risk management in Japan to reduce the damage caused by Tsunami and earthquake in 2011.

Japan is encircled by world’s densest seismometer network and also has the biggest tsunami barrier. Therefore, it was evident that the country would bear the highest amount of destruction. Despite of knowing this fact the risk management team of Japan was failed to reduce the intensity of the damage. As a result of that over 4 million buildings were ravaged and around 28,000 people were found missing or dead (Gonzalez-Riancho et al. 2015). The destruction of property was accounted over $300 billion which was about 4% of the GDP of Japan at that time (Suppasri et al. 2016). This was purely projected the failure of the risk management in Japan to get anticipation of the damaging capability of the disaster. Moreover, this failure in respect to the risk management exposed the inadequate measures taken by the risk management organisation and futility of their working process. Immediate mobilisation of resources was obstructed and in addition to this the medical aid, food and water supply was severely damaged as well.

In this spectrum there is a bigger dimension of stake holders associated with the risk management of tsunami and earthquake in Japan. The country is divided into various kinds of stakeholders in terms of women, people with disability, senior citizens, environment and ecosystem, the people who were associated with the process of risk management. However, it will be overestimated to express that every stakeholders were equally identified by the risk management facility, but in reality there was an absence of possible stakeholders who were supposed to be played a pivotal role in reducing the damages from that mega disaster (Gibson et al. 2016).  Stakeholders like the common people like senior citizens, disabled individuals were not identified as the stakeholders of the tsunami and earthquake risk management. The national government and the local government have some idea about the coming of tsunami but the common people were kept in dark. As a result of that in due course of the disaster the Japanese people did not get the time to prepare themselves for the calamities and in return caused heavy damage.

There were a number of negative impacts of tsunami and earthquake on the earth. It can be asserted that tsunamis and earthquake are the deadliest natural calamities which have enormous power of destruction. Therefore, the possible consequences are-

Tsunami and earthquake can jeopardize the ecological balances of the earth. The destruction of forests and aquatic life, damages in the coral reefs and the environment can develop threats and challenges to the sustainability of earth. Besides this, there are adverse impact of tsunamis and earthquakes in the spectrum of health. Damaging the drinking water facility, ample supply of food and medical care can affect for the health and care sector adversely (Van Der Vegt et al. 2015). In fact, stagnant water can promote the growth of insects which is detrimental for the healthy atmosphere. There is also the economic impact on local economy which was ravaged by the coming of tsunami and earthquakes. In the coastal and mountain areas due to the eruption and creation of tsunami and earthquake, the local tourism industry will be affected badly. As a result of loss of revenue for business usher hardship for the local population. In addition to this, the psychological impact cannot be overlooked also. There are short term and long term psychological impact on the social well being affected by tsunami and earthquake. Issues like trauma can be vulnerable for children and adolescents (Chan 2015).

In this context, tsunami and earthquake in Japan damaged the health and economy of the country mostly. It can also be ascribed that in the health and economic sector due to heavy loss of health and properties the country faced a series of problems which were against the future progress of Japan.

The magnitude of the devastation was so fatal that it took the country aback up to 10 years. It was estimated that 1.68 million people were died in Japan due to the lack of risk management efficiency and warning. Moreover, an amount of 62,000 people sought shelter because of the malfunctioning of the risk management (Gonzalez-Riancho et al. 2015). In Japan only the loss of property was estimated at an amount of approximately $300 billion which was about 4% of the national gross domestic product (GDP) of the country (Suppasri et al. 2016).

The tsunami disaster gave a fatal blow to the Japanese population and economy. Therefore, the government was willing to initiate some new strategies in the risk management process of the country. In combating this disaster in the post-tsunami scenario the national and local government started to respond in a more matured way. By drafting reconstruction plans with introducing new plan and paradigms to the risk management strategy are significant. The Japanese Meteorological Agency used an Earthquake Early Warnings (EEWs) which was used to be considered as the most advanced system (Ai et al. 2016). However, after the tsunami in 2011 the JMA expanded the seismic monitoring network by installing a broadband and offshore monitoring system. This system is referred to be the most effective system till now and the Japanese government is also looking for its newest modifications (Yun and Hamada 2015).

It can be concluded that mistakes provides the lesson to lean and in case of Japan the government and JMA also identified the possible flaw of their risk management system. In that context, the authority of Japan also takes initiative to modify the existing set up and create a better risk management framework which is seemed to be more effective and efficient.

References

Ai, F., Comfort, L.K., Dong, Y. and Znati, T., 2016. A dynamic decision support system based on geographical information and mobile social networks: A model for tsunami risk mitigation in Padang, Indonesia. Safety science, 90, pp.62-74.

Chan, N.W., 2015. Impacts of disasters and disaster risk management in Malaysia: The case of floods. In Resilience and Recovery in Asian Disasters (pp. 239-265). Springer, Tokyo.

Gibson, T.D., Pelling, M., Ghosh, A., Matyas, D., Siddiqi, A., Solecki, W., Johnson, L., Kenney, C., Johnston, D. and Du Plessis, R., 2016. Pathways for transformation: Disaster risk management to enhance resilience to extreme events. Journal of Extreme Events, 3(01), p.1671002.

Gonzalez-Riancho, P., Aliaga, B., Hettiarachchi, S., González, M. and Medina, R., 2015. A contribution to the selection of tsunami human vulnerability indicators: conclusions from tsunami impacts in Sri Lanka and Thailand (2004), Samoa (2009), Chile (2010) and Japan (2011). Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 15(7), pp.1493-1514.

Olson, D.L. and Wu, D.D., 2015. Enterprise risk management(Vol. 3). World Scientific Publishing Company.

Suppasri, A., Latcharote, P., Bricker, J.D., Leelawat, N., Hayashi, A., Yamashita, K., Makinoshima, F., Roeber, V. and Imamura, F., 2016. Improvement of tsunami countermeasures based on lessons from the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami—Situation after five years. Coastal Engineering Journal, 58(04), p.1640011.

Van Der Vegt, G.S., Essens, P., Wahlström, M. and George, G., 2015. Managing risk and resilience. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), pp.971-980.

Yun, N.Y. and Hamada, M., 2015. Evacuation behavior and fatality rate during the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake and tsunami. Earthquake Spectra, 31(3), pp.1237-1265.