On March 11, 2019, it has been 8 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake. As one of its missions, IRIDeS has been contributing to disaster recovery, with researchers from various fields conducting research in recovery as well as being involved in practical recovery activities. Now that the first stage of many reconstruction projects has been completed and the landscape of the affected areas has undergone major changes, engineering, medical, and social science researchers were asked to provide a progress report on the activities so far.

I have participated in many reconstruction projects in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures, and particularly, in Ishinomaki and Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture. In Ishinomaki, I have been working in the support team with Prof. Yasuaki Onoda and Assoc. Prof. Michio Ubaura (concurrently serving with IRIDeS) of Tohoku University Graduate School of Engineering. The team has covered all fields of civil engineering, architecture, and urban planning. We have been involved in most reconstruction projects in Ishinomaki such as the city center as well as in the projects on the peninsula and in the villages. In Onagawa, I have been the chairperson of the Reconstruction Design Review Board.

 

I was also involved in the seawall construction. In addition to supporting the formulation of the seawall design guidelines in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures, I also assisted in the individual plans for the seawalls. Since the seawalls generated widespread social debates, I proceeded with a struggle. Despite seawall advantages such as protecting the area from tsunami and storm surges, there are disadvantages in terms of the expensive construction, ongoing maintenance costs, and possible damage to the environment and landscape. Those who opposed the seawall wanted no negative impact; however, based on reality, I worked hard to reduce the negative effects from 100 to 90.

 

For some reconstruction projects, I even created preliminary design drawings with team members; however, my main job as an expert was to provide advice to improve the design quality as much as possible. As designs can be both good and bad depending on the designer and because the residents will continue to live in the town for years, the engineering experts endeavored to ensure a town that is easy for people to use, easy to maintain, and attractive to look at. However, we listened to the municipalities and residents and revised the plans when necessary as civil engineering is a collective process.

 

Frequent inter-project adjustments were also made. For example, the Ishinomaki city center projects were divided into ones of roads, rivers, coasts, cities, and houses, and each project came under a different jurisdiction. The primary contractors also worked on national, prefectural, and city projects. Such sectionalism made the decision-making extremely complicated and fragmented; nevertheless, we endeavored to manage any conflicts so as to be able to deliver consistent urban development projects. Moreover, although the municipality had the primary responsibility for these reconstruction projects, as major infrastructure is mostly a prefectural management responsibility, it was impossible for the municipalities to proceed alone. As we were positioned between the prefecture and the city, we also had a coordinating role to ensure that the projects progressed smoothly.

 

Involvement in these reconstruction projects did not directly lead to civil engineering research papers as the implementation basically involved the gathering of existing knowledge and applying it amid the current systems and constraints. However, I think these records should be archived for future generations, and these experiences flexibly leveraged in response to Nankai megathrust earthquakes in the future.

 

In developing countries, reconstruction is often regarded as a case of Build Back Better, 1) which increases security compared with before the disaster. The disaster areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake need to be seen in a different context, however. The challenge of Tohoku disaster areas has been how to establish a sustainable city in an area that was flooded by the tsunami and reduced to bare land. I believe Tohoku’s Build Back Better is a matter of how to create a low-cost compact town where people can actively live, adding new landscapes and economic attractions and solving regional problems, in this era of declining population in Japan.

 

Many people in the Tohoku disaster area have been engaged in the reconstruction projects, but it is expected that going forward many of these people are going to leave, resulting in a decrease in the population, which could be difficult for the town. Therefore, we need to consider how we can ensure continuity in this town. Although this is not related to my physical engineering specialty but is a non-physical management problem, I hope to continue to support it.

※ All photos were taken by Assoc. Prof. Hirano

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1) Build Back Better: increase disaster risk reduction capabilities in a country or community through a post-disaster recovery and reconstruction process, incorporating restoration of infrastructure and social system and revival of livelihood, economy and environment in an integrated manner. Build Back Better is one of a priority actions in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 that was formulated at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction.

 

How IRIDeS Researchers Have Worked on Recovery Since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake （#1）（#3）

 

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