Evaluation of Regional Vulnerability to Disasters by People of Ishikawa, Japan: A Cross Sectional Study Using National Health Insurance Data

Abstract

The 2013 Partial Amendment of the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law mandated that a roster of vulnerable persons during disasters be created, and further development of evacuation support is expected. In this study, the number of vulnerable people living in target analytical areas are identified in terms of neighborhood units by using the National Health Insurance Database to create a realistic and efficient evacuation support plan. Later, after considering the “vulnerability” of an area to earthquake disaster damage, a quantitative evaluation of the state of the disaster is performed using a principle component analysis that further divided the analytical target areas into neighborhood units to make a detailed determination of the number of disaster-vulnerable persons, the severity of the disaster, etc. The results of the disaster evaluation performed after considering the vulnerability of an area are that 628 disaster-vulnerable persons live in areas with a relatively higher disaster evaluation value.

Rural Households’ Livelihood Capital, Risk Perception, and Willingness to Purchase Earthquake Disaster Insurance: Evidence from Southwestern China

“…Furthermore, many mountain settlements in China are areas where poverty and earthquake disasters are intertwined, as a result of the impact of disasters. In addition to the assistance from the government and society, the rural households’ own capability is also an important means to resist external shocks [ 10 , 24 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]. For example, Xu et al [ 10 ] found that savings and migrant work income can significantly reduce the impact of external risks on rural household poverty vulnerability.…”

Studies of Health Insurance Claims Data in Japan: A Scoping Review

“…Studies that used NHI/LSEHS, a municipality-based claims database, often aimed at “health economics” and “health policy evaluation and utilization.” This review found various highly practical studies for municipal administrative planning and management. For instance, a study aimed to identify the number of vulnerable people in neighborhood units by using the NHI database to create an evacuation support plan (54) . Some studies proposed to use claims database research as fundamental data for monitoring healthcare indicators in regional healthcare or cost moderation plans (55) , (56) , (57) .…”

Analysis of the Quality and Quantity of Antiepileptic Drugs Required in Communities during Large-Scale Disasters: Focused on a Small Local City in Japan

“…Thus far, the KDB has been extensively used to conduct research on estimating the extent of damage and difficulty in evacuating people who require support from a third party during a disaster (i.e., vulnerable people) [7,8]. In a previous study on estimating the extent of damage using the KDB [7], the authors extracted information on dialysis, ischemic heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease patients from the KDB and estimated the circumstances under which they would be affected during an earthquake. Another study investigated the difficulty of evacuating people requiring special care [8], i.e., patients with orthopedic diseases whose evacuation on foot was considered difficult; information on such patients was extracted from the KDB.…”