Empirical Analysis of the Long-Term Life Recovery Process from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake Using the Life Recovery Calendar Method

Long-term Recovery from Recent Disasters in Japan and the United States

ObjectivesThe 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake had an enormous negative impact on survivors’ health. Many survivors experienced psychological distress and their long-term psychological recovery process remains unclear. Our objective was thus...

Large earthquakes have been associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. In Japan, the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji (H-A) Earthquake was an urban-underground-type earthquake, whereas the 2011 Great East Japan (GEJ) Earthquake was an ocean-trench type. In the present study, we examined how these different earthquake types affected CVD mortality. We examined death certificate data from 2008 to 2012 for 131 municipalities in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures (n=320,348) and from 1992 to 1996 for 220 municipalities in Hyogo, Osaka, and Kyoto prefectures (n=592,670). A Poisson regression model showed significant increases in the monthly numbers of acute myocardial infarction (AMI)-related deaths (incident rate ratio [IRR] GEJ=1.34, P=0.001; IRR of H-A=1.57, P<0.001) and stroke-related deaths (IRR of GEJ=1.42, P<0.001; IRR of H-A=1.33, P<0.001) after the earthquakes. Two months after the earthquakes, AMI deaths remained significant only for H-A (IRR=1.13, P=0.029). When analyzing the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) after the earthquakes using the Cochran-Armitage trend test, seismic intensity was significantly associated with AMI mortality for 2 weeks after both the GEJ (P for trend=0.089) and H-A earthquakes (P for trend=0.005). Following the GEJ and H-A earthquakes, there was a sharp increase in CVD mortality. The effect of the disaster was sustained for months after the H-A earthquake, but was diminished after the GEJ Earthquake.

Individual disaster recovery: A framework in the long-term recovery process after the Great East Japan Earthquake

The earthquake that struck the Japanese port city of Kobe on January 17, 1995, was the most severe quake ever to strike a modern urban area. It has become the most studied, analyzed, and discussed natural disaster in history. What I propose to add to this dialogue is an economist's overview of what he saw in Kobe 19 months after the event and what he learned during the ensuing 6 months.

This paper clarifies recovery status and life recovery processes based on victims’ feelings following the March 2011 Great East Japan earthquake. Specifically, a questionnaires were given to about 3,000 quake victims to determine their status and any issues they may have had. The overall recovery picture was obtained using measurement called a “recovery calendar.” The structure of the recovery process was compared to disasters such as the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake in 1995. The recovery calendar indicated that 80% of respondents felt that local activities have not been restored to their original state and saw themselves as victims three years after the earthquake, indicating that recovery had progressed slower than it had following the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. In a comparison of the three prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi displayed the same recovery trends. Fukushima recovered later than the other two prefectures. For the item “The local economy was no longer influenced by the earthquake,” it was indicated that the economic situation in Iwate was worse than that in Miyagi or Fukushima. General characteristics of the life recovery process were also investigated through a comparison to other earthquake and water disasters. Life recovery proceeded in five phases: 1) Victims prepared to have an uncomfortable life for a while and understood the extent of the damage. 2) Victims felt safe and office and school activities had resumed. 3) Everyday life settled down, housing problems were finally settled, and personal financial situations were no longer influenced by the earthquake. 4) Respondents no longer defined themselves as victims. 5) The local economy was no longer influenced by the earthquake. In cluster analysis for classifying life recovery processes, 12 items were classified into five clusters corresponding to the above five phases, statistically showing that victims’ lives recovered through these phases. As a result of decision tree analysis for predicting causes of “they no longer defined themselves as victims” in an attempt to organize life recovery processes, the same structure of life recovery processes was found as for the three-layer recovery model of the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. In short, physical and economic recovery such as of houses and regions was achieved based on the reconstruction of infrastructures, followed by the achievement of life recovery. It is predicted and proposed that life recovery in areas affected by the Great East Japan earthquake took the course of infrastructure reconstruction at first, then achieved physical recovery in local areas by supporting house recovery on a parallel with economic support. To achieve them, a long-term plan from a perspective of at least 10 years is required, as was the case of the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.

Robotics researchers appear to have shifted their focus since the Great East Japan Earthquake. Despite a large-scale national R&amp;D project on Advanced Robots for Hazardous Environments for 8 years from 1983, the technology has not been put to use effectively following the Great Hanshin Earthquake and researchers are starting to look more closely at applications enabling robots to replace human beings, e.g., by rescuing victims of earthquake and flood disasters. A good example is Quince and the remote-controlled heavy equipment used to handle the pyroclastic flow at Unzen volcano in 1991 and then mobilized at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Robotics researchers of the past only used to describe their dream proposals when asked what robots could accomplish. Since the 2011 disaster event, however, it has become clear that the issues we should be looking at are those of developing robots that are practical and useful. If we are asked what role the real-world competition Tsukuba Challenge plays in this context, would first recommend that those who hope to take part visit the actual site and see for themselves what they must do to field a winning robot. The Tsukuba Challenge site includes public thoroughfares traversed by pedestrians and cyclists. Although there are no cars or motorcycles on these paths, almost anything can happen. From hot summer until cooler fall when the official run is held daily temperature, rain, wind and typhoons, and trees – all of which must be detected for navigation – undergo many changes. These changes require that robots navigate accurately in this real-world environment. In general, robotics research papers are accepted for publication if robots can navigate as planned in a restricted and fixed mobile environment even if they can do so only once. In the Tsukuba Challenge, however, many things can go wrong and robot maneuvers can become unstable or even nonmobile, regardless of successful navigation in laboratory settings. There is no space here to discuss all possible factors, but the established navigation method by one paper is not always successful and responsible in the actual Tsukuba Challenge environment. Robots historically came to be as devices operated by human beings, but those taking part in the Challenge must be controlled by computers instead of human operators. This means that it must be confirmed that robots can operate as required in experiments meeting various conditions. Teams may conduct ten or so trial runs a year on the actual route so that their systems can be adequately adjusted and modified. The total process that competing in the Tsukuba Challenge requires also has an educational effect in grooming new talent in robotics. The Challenge differs from the DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge, held from 2004 to 2007, in the size – robots must not be too big and must not appear threatening – and the need to take the presence of human beings into consideration. Although the task from 2007 to 2012 had been only to navigate a preset route and reach a final goal, still the percentage of successful runs has declined. From 2013 on, another task has been added – that of locating specific persons (search targets) within given areas – to encourage the use of advanced technology in realizing useful robots. Those interested may see the results on the Tsukuba Challenge website as follow: http://www.tsukubachallenge.jp/tc2013. The selection of articles for this special issue emphasized the following criteria: 1) For robots successfully completing required tasks, describing and discussing the superiority of the control technology and results. 2) For unsuccessful robots, clearly analyzing how the actual run differed from researchers’ expectations and pinpointing the underlying causes of failure. The submitted papers describe technologies that have enabled robots to navigate in spaces shared with human beings, and we hope that a study of these papers will spur readers to accelerate advances in autonomous mobile robots.

This study aimed to delineate the decline in public interest toward the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (FNPP) accident in Japan over a ten-year period. In this longitudinal descriptive study, we searched for publications within a ten-year period in Letters to the Editor that mentioned the GEJE, the FNPP accident, or the January 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (GHAE) that occurred in Japan, using the official databases of the three largest Japanese newspapers. The GEJE- and GHAE-related publications (4,809 and 2,092, respectively) are depicted as scatter plots. The results show a gradual decrease in the publications mentioning GEJE or GHAE. The impact of GEJE and FNPP on Japanese society was enormous, but the public interest waned over time. Communication strategies that maintain a high public interest in previous disasters may be necessary.

This chapter details the experiences of being a partner in a long-term recovery process. The research about long-term recovery from substance use gives the impression that recovery processes are about single people. However, this is illusory, and reflects the focus of most research into substance-use difficulties. The chapter looks at romantic relationships in long-term recovery from a Norwegian perspective. This is a perspective involving the context of the Scandinavian welfare state, well-established public services, and countries with high levels of gender equality. It exemplifies, from interviews, how women talk about their lives as partners to men in long-term recovery. By doing so, the chapter provides insight into some of the complex experiences of being a partner in a long-term recovery process, and how these women's experiences are related to their social and cultural context.

Two massive earthquakes have occurred in Japan since 1995: the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the Great East Japan Earthquake. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that occurred in 1995 mainly damaged Kobe City; following the earthquake, its population declined from 1.52 million to 1.42 million. The Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred in 2011 significantly damaged the Tohoku region in Japan. The coastal area of Fukushima Prefecture is still suffering from the impacts of the nuclear power plant accident that occurred as a result of the earthquake. There is the possibility of a long-term population decline due to the evacuation that followed, particularly in the coastal area of Fukushima Prefecture. In this chapter, the author analyses the recovery process of the population in the affected regions due to these two massive earthquakes. Furthermore, as a case study, the economic impacts of population decline due to the Great East Japan Earthquake are estimated for the affected region. From the results of the analysis, the author shows the difference in the population recovery process between the two earthquakes, and the negative impacts on the region affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Mental health care and East Japan Great Earthquake

ObjectivePrevious studies have reported that elderly victims of natural disasters might be prone to a subsequent decline in motor function. Victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) relocated to...

Association between housing type and γ-GTP increase after the Great East Japan Earthquake

Recently, natural disasters and terrorist activities have been leading to mass casualty situations unexpectedly around the globe. In addition to the traditional emergency medical services centering around medically trained and paramedic personnel, dental practitioners having vital skills and attributes may be important in responding to a mass casualty situation. This paper aims at discussing the role of dentists in disaster management and the role of forensic odontology in the disaster victim identification (DVI), its status in India and some suggestions to develop the plans for same. Articles were searched in various medical databases such as Google Scholar, Pubmed Central, Sciencedirect,Wiley online Library, Scopus, Copernicus to gather all relevant information on the subject. Various keywords were used as search tool such as 'Mass disaster', 'Forensic odontology', 'Victim identification'. The search resulted in total of 170 articles which we reviewed. Due to limitation to the list of references we have constricted our review to only 39 articles for more informative literature and supported the topic of the present manuscript 'The Role of Dentistry in Disaster Management and Victim Identification: An Overview of Challenges in Indo-Nepal Scenario' more specifically. Every disaster is unique and involves interplay of different factors and circumstances such as nature of disaster, number of victims and extent of body fragmentation that ultimately challenges the disaster response planning. Apart from the victim recovery and evacuation, the disaster response planning must include the established procedures for the identification of the victims of the disaster. The identification of victims essentially relies on forensic anthropology, radiology, DNA typing and fingerprints, as well as odontology.

Objective and settingTo study longitudinally cancer-related experiences of spouses of patients with prostate cancer and the predictors of their psychological recovery and quality of life (QOL) by following the participants...