[Special Feature: Disaster Prevention and Communication] Shoko Miyagawa: Learning from Information Challenges During Disasters Following the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake

2024/12/04

We would like to express our deepest sympathies to everyone affected by the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake and the floods in September.

The 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, which occurred on January 1, 2024, caused maximum seismic intensity 7 tremors, tsunamis, and large-scale house damage due to fires, primarily in Wajima City, Suzu City, Noto Town, Anamizu Town, Nanao City, and Shika Town in Ishikawa Prefecture. This resulted in the cutting off of roads and infrastructure, and long-term disruption of water and sewage systems. Life in evacuation centers and at home in the affected areas was extremely difficult, and the health of those requiring special assistance, such as pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and people with disabilities—who are considered "vulnerable people during disasters"—was put at risk. In response, many private support activities were implemented in addition to relief efforts by the affected municipalities, Ishikawa Prefecture, and the national government.

Initially, calls were made to refrain from volunteering from the perspective of prioritizing rescue operations on fragile routes. However, several private support organizations entered the northern Noto Peninsula early while ensuring safety, conducting relief activities such as medical support, supplies and food support, and transportation support. Unlike general individual volunteers, these support organizations are disaster relief professionals with extensive experience. While sharing the disaster situation among teams and obtaining information from rear-support personnel, they provided support sometimes in coordination with official relief activities and sometimes based on their own judgment. According to the Japan Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (JVOAD), at least 324 private support organizations had carried out activities on the ground by the end of July 2024. The content of the support is diverse depending on the expertise of each organization, including support for operating evacuation centers, food support such as soup kitchens and meal delivery from central kitchens, responding to disaster victims requiring special assistance such as children, the elderly, and foreigners, support for evacuation with pets, retrieving valuables from damaged houses, disposing of disaster waste, removing fallen block walls using heavy machinery, clearing roads, and building local communities. Due to the large-scale flooding in September, many support activities are still ongoing as of November.

The Information Support Rescue Team (IT DART), in which the author participates, provides support to organizations that enter disaster-affected areas to provide aid. This includes lending IT equipment, disseminating volunteer recruitment information, supporting data collection, entry, and database construction, and supporting the construction of other information systems related to aid. Immediately after the disaster, we proceeded with preparing equipment and securing local activity bases, starting activities based in Kanazawa City on January 7, and responding to requests for support from organizations and evacuation centers that had already begun activities in Oku-Noto.

At the beginning of the support, roads to Oku-Noto were restricted, making individual transportation of supplies difficult. At that time, welfare facilities in Kanazawa City such as "Share Kanazawa" and "Ganto Mukiau Kai / Gen-chan House" were acting as relay points for supplies, and we were able to deliver equipment to Wajima City and Suzu City via these facilities.

In addition to roads, water, and electricity, telephone and internet communications suffered significant damage due to the destruction of base stations and power outages, and the disruption of communications lasted for a long period. Starlink, a portable satellite internet system, was provided on a large scale by KDDI CORPORATION and installed at government offices in disaster areas, rescue teams such as the Self-Defense Forces and DMAT, and evacuation centers. IT DART supported the securing of communication infrastructure in the affected areas through the setup of Starlink equipment that arrived in the disaster areas and the creation of simple manuals.

Evacuation centers often lack a sufficient IT environment. IT DART installed PCs, printers, and mobile routers at 15 evacuation centers in Wajima City, as well as the Shika Town evacuation center, the Noto Town welfare evacuation center, and disaster volunteer centers in various locations. We also supported the construction of database environments for managing evacuees at evacuation centers in Wajima City and Anamizu Town.

Timely information related to disaster recovery and reconstruction is posted on municipal websites, but it is difficult for the elderly and others who do not have smartphones to access that information. For this reason, digital signage was introduced at government offices and evacuation centers along with paper bulletin boards so that the latest information could be viewed. IT DART provides content support for this digital signage. We pick up the latest information from administrative websites, process it for digital signage, and update the content via the internet.

We summarize volunteer information recruited by each city and town in Oku-Noto, as well as Ishikawa Prefecture, and post it daily on X. Since many volunteers are still needed due to the multiple disasters caused by the floods in September, we are continuing this activity as of November.

From January to February, wide-area secondary evacuation was carried out from the Oku-Noto region, where house and infrastructure damage was significant, to the southern part of the prefecture and other prefectures. The 1.5-tier evacuation centers established by the prefecture in Kanazawa City and other locations served as relay points for more than 10,000 people to move to secondary evacuation sites such as hotels and inns within and outside the prefecture. Although these centers were established with the assumption of a stay of a few days before moving on, in reality, a certain number of long-term residents, such as elderly people who found it difficult to live in hotels, emerged, and continuous health support was provided by public health nurses, welfare professionals, rehabilitation professionals, nurses, and social workers. IT DART, together with the National Council of YMCAs of Japan, supported the operation of the 1.5-tier evacuation centers, primarily providing management support for the care information of residents. Furthermore, to provide seamless care after residents move to their homes or temporary housing, we are working with the prefecture to digitize the care information of residents that was managed on paper and provide it to the municipalities they move to.

Such activities cannot be implemented by a single organization alone. Collaboration with the administration and Social Welfare Councils in the affected areas, cooperation with JVOAD, which coordinates support, and networking during normal times with organizations that provide direct support sustain timely support activities that meet the needs of the affected areas.

Furthermore, in carrying out our activities, we have received support from various individuals and organizations other than IT DART members. In particular, through Keio University Vice-President Keita Yamauchi, Keio University Councilor Mitsuru Mitani, and Mr. Tadateru Mitani (Secretary General of the Ishikawa Prefecture Mita-kai), volunteers from Mitani Sangyo Co., Ltd., headquartered in Ishikawa Prefecture, participated in local activities. Similarly, PFU Limited, also headquartered in Ishikawa Prefecture, as well as NTT DOCOMO, INC., SoftBank Corp., Internet Initiative Japan Inc., Mobile Radio Center, Inc., PSCP Inc., Sakuraya Co., Ltd., and many other companies and organizations have continued to provide support such as IT equipment, software licenses, communication devices, and information terminals. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude.

In the disaster response to the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, while disaster response using information technologies such as drones and IC cards was attempted, challenges in information infrastructure and information management became apparent, especially as evacuation forms became more diverse, such as wide-area evacuees. Identifying wide-area evacuees and delivering timely information on municipal disaster response and infrastructure recovery status are essential measures for maintaining the connection between disaster victims and the region and for regaining life in Noto. Furthermore, ensuring that the care needs of disaster victims who require support, such as the elderly, are handed over to the next supporter even as their location changes from primary evacuation centers to 1.5-tier evacuation centers, secondary evacuation centers, and then temporary housing is important from the perspective of disaster case management, which the national government is promoting as continuous livelihood reconstruction support tailored to each individual victim. A shift is required from information management that attempts to isolate and solve the immediate challenge of "disaster response" to information management that consistently supports livelihood reconstruction from the victim's perspective throughout the changing phases of the disaster.

On the other hand, if such information management is left to the efforts of those on the ground, the burden on evacuation center operators will increase, leading to variations in implementation. Personnel on the ground are constantly operating unfamiliar evacuation centers with a sense of tension while paying attention to the safety of both victims and supporters. Under such circumstances, even if they know it is beneficial for the victims, it is not easy to continuously carry out coordination with the parties to whom information is handed over or to summarize information. Creating a "systematization" to realize appropriate information management while reducing the burden on the ground will be a future challenge.

In the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, various new measures were implemented, such as the establishment and operation of 1.5-tier evacuation centers to realize smooth wide-area evacuation, information collection projects to understand the needs of elderly victims in evacuation centers or at home and connect them to appropriate support, and the creation of databases for the collected needs information and the status of victims across the entire prefecture. On the other hand, challenges also arose, such as the insufficient IT environment at evacuation centers, the fact that care records at 1.5-tier evacuation centers were paper-based, and the duplication of victim databases between municipalities and the prefecture. However, these can be called "homework for the future" that became clear precisely because various supporters, including the prefecture, municipalities, and the private sector, boldly tackled better information management. National-level efforts are required for information management plans based on the premise of wide-area evacuation, information sharing systems based on the premise of collaboration between the administration and private support, and the construction and environmental improvement of information systems to support them. A review of challenges and policy recommendations should be conducted to ensure that the experience of the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake is not forgotten but used as a lesson, and I intend to work on this to the best of my ability.

Finally, I would like to comment on the floods that occurred in the Noto Peninsula in September. Large earthquakes cause land subsidence and weakening, increasing the risk of floods and sediment disasters. Furthermore, in Japan, where there is insufficient land, there are cases where the installation sites for emergency temporary housing must inevitably be in locations with high disaster risk. In the summer, damage from typhoons and heavy rains caused by linear rainbands occurs frequently throughout Japan. To avoid repeating such damage, reconstruction plans for earthquake disasters that are expected to take more than a year to recover from should be formulated based on the recognition that there is a high probability of a compound disaster.