Examining the Indirect Death Surveillance System of The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

Abstract

The long-term mortality risk of natural disasters is a key threat to disaster resilience improvement, yet an authoritative certification and a reliable surveillance system are, unfortunately, yet to be established in many countries. This study aimed to clarify the mechanism of post-disaster indirect deaths in Japan, to improve the existing disaster recovery evaluation system and support decision making in public policy. This study first investigated the definition of indirect deaths via a literature review before examining the observed number of indirect deaths via case study, census data from the Population Demographic and Household Surveys, other social surveys, and reports in the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, which severely damaged northeastern Japan, especially the three prefectures, which are the target areas in this context (i.e., Fukushima, Iwate, and Miyagi). It was found that the reported number of indirect deaths was significantly underestimated. In total, 4657 indirect deaths were estimated to have occurred in the target prefectures. This was higher than the reported number, which was 3784. The overall statistics established via collaboration between local administrations and governments can be improved to provide better reference for researchers and policymakers to investigate the long-term effects of natural disaster.

Special Issue “Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation: An Interdisciplinary Approach”

“…Li et al [8] proposed a rapid estimation method of earthquake fatality by combining physical simulations and empirical statistics in China. Zheng et al [9] studied excess mortality of indirect deaths caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 and found that the government underreported indirect deaths. Indirect deaths are caused by factors indirectly related to disasters, such as illness deterioration due to difficult conditions while evacuating, increased stress due to drastic changes in living conditions, and suicides among evacuees.…”

Seismotectonics of Shallow-Focus Earthquakes in Venezuela with Links to Gravity Anomalies and Geologic Heterogeneity Mapped by a GMT Scripting Language

“…With enough data on earthquake events, these methods enable an accurate prognosis of seismicity with the aim of mitigating hazard risks [7,8]. Early detection of seismic risks can be solved by evaluating and visualizing different geophysical determinants that affect disaster fatalities at the country level, namely, seismic hazard strength, population density, distribution of locations, demographic and socioeconomic data, ands geological background layers [9][10][11][12]. For instance, a systematic examination of the correlations and links among various geophysical and geological determinants underlying disasters is useful for the prevention of socioeconomic risks in geologically unstable zones [13,14].…”