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

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 intensity 7 tremors, tsunamis, and fires, resulting in large-scale housing damage, severed roads and infrastructure, and long-term water and sewage outages, primarily in Wajima City, Suzu City, Noto Town, Anamizu Town, Nanao City, and Shika Town in Ishikawa Prefecture. 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—was particularly endangered. In response, many private support initiatives were implemented in addition to relief activities by the affected municipalities, Ishikawa Prefecture, and the national government.

Initially, calls were made to refrain from volunteering to prioritize 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/food distribution, and transportation assistance. Unlike general individual volunteers, these support organizations are disaster relief professionals with extensive experience. They shared information on the damage situation among teams, obtained information from rear-support personnel, and provided assistance sometimes in coordination with public relief activities and sometimes through their own judgment. According to the Japan Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (JVOAD), at least 324 private support organizations had deployed activities locally by the end of July 2024. The content of support is diverse depending on the expertise of each organization, including evacuation center management support, meal support such as soup kitchens and distribution from central kitchens, responding to 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 collapsed block walls with heavy machinery, clearing roads, and building local communities. Due to the large-scale flooding in September, many support activities continue as of November.

The Information Support Rescue Team (IT DART), in which the author participates, provides support to organizations that enter disaster areas to provide aid. This includes lending IT equipment, disseminating volunteer recruitment information, supporting data collection, entry, and database construction, and assisting in the development of other information systems related to support. 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 support requests from evacuation centers and organizations that had already begun activities in Oku-Noto.

At the beginning of the support, roads to Oku-Noto were restricted, making individual transport 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 by going through 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 time. 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 zone and the creation of simple manuals.

Evacuation centers often lack sufficient IT environments. 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 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 own smartphones to access that information. For this reason, digital signage was introduced at government offices and evacuation centers alongside 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 and post volunteer recruitment information from various municipalities in Oku-Noto and Ishikawa Prefecture daily on X. Since many volunteers are still needed due to the multiple disasters caused by the September floods, we are continuing this activity as of November.

From January to February, wide-area secondary evacuations were carried out from the Oku-Noto region, which suffered heavy damage to housing and infrastructure, to the southern part of the prefecture and other prefectures. The 1.5-tier evacuation centers established by the prefecture in Kanazawa City and elsewhere served as relay points for over 10,000 people moving 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, in reality, a certain number of long-term residents occurred, such as elderly people for whom living in a hotel was difficult, and continuous health support was provided by public health nurses, welfare workers, rehabilitation professionals, nurses, and social workers. IT DART, together with the National Council of YMCAs of Japan, supported the operation of 1.5-tier evacuation centers, primarily assisting in the management of care information for residents. Furthermore, to ensure 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 of their new locations.

Such activities cannot be carried out by a single organization alone. Collaboration with local governments and social welfare councils in the affected areas, cooperation with JVOAD (an organization that coordinates support), and networking during normal times with organizations that provide direct support underpin timely support activities that meet the needs of the disaster-affected areas.

Furthermore, in carrying out these activities, we have received support from various individuals and organizations beyond the members of IT DART. 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. We also continue to receive support for IT equipment, software licenses, communication devices, and information terminals from PFU Limited, also headquartered in Ishikawa Prefecture, as well as NTT DOCOMO, INC., SoftBank Corp., Internet Initiative Japan Inc., Mobile Radio Center Foundation, PSCP Inc., Sakura-ya Co., Ltd., and many other companies and organizations. 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 clear, especially as evacuation forms diversified, such as wide-area evacuees. Identifying wide-area evacuees and delivering timely information on municipal disaster responses and infrastructure recovery status are essential measures for maintaining the connection between victims and the region and reclaiming life in Noto. Furthermore, ensuring that the care needs of victims requiring support, such as the elderly, are handed over to the next supporter even as they move from primary evacuation centers to 1.5-tier centers, secondary centers, and then temporary housing is important from the perspective of Disaster Case Management, which the government promotes as continuous livelihood reconstruction support tailored to each individual victim. A shift is required from information management that tries to solve the immediate problem of "disaster response" to information management that consistently supports livelihood reconstruction from the victim's perspective throughout the changing phases of a 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. Staff on the ground are always operating unfamiliar evacuation centers with a sense of tension while paying attention to the safety of both victims and supporters. In such a situation, even if they know it is beneficial for the victims, it is not easy to continuously carry out coordination with the person taking over the information or summarizing the information. Creating a "systematization" to achieve appropriate information management while reducing the burden on the ground will be a challenge for the future.

In the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, various new measures were implemented, such as the establishment and operation of 1.5-tier evacuation centers to achieve 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 collected needs information and the status of victims across the entire prefecture. On the other hand, challenges also arose, such as insufficient IT environments at evacuation centers, care records at 1.5-tier centers being 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 government and private support, and the construction of information systems and environment preparation 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 limited ability.

Finally, I would like to comment on the floods that occurred in the Noto Peninsula in September. Large earthquakes cause ground subsidence and weakening, increasing the risk of floods and landslides. 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 heavy rains caused by typhoons and linear rainbands occurs frequently throughout Japan. To avoid repeating such damage, in earthquake disasters where recovery is expected to take more than a year, reconstruction plans should be formulated based on the recognition that there is a high probability of a compound disaster.