Supporting decision-maker in local governments for responding to disasters
In a large-scale disaster, such as an earthquake, the disaster prevention headquarters of the affected municipalities must undertake an extremely large number of emergency measures. However, it is extremely difficult to accurately decide when and how specific measures should be implemented under such circumstances. Moreover, the necessary measures and their order of priority vary over time according to the disaster period, evacuation guidance period, and the post-evacuation period.
This necessitates a proper understanding of changing circumstances so that accurate decision making can be carried out at the disaster prevention headquarters. To enable local governments to rationally respond to disasters, even under such difficult circumstances, we are conducting R&D on supporting the tasks performed by disaster prevention headquarters.
The tasks carried out at disaster prevention headquarters involve a cycle of three processes: disaster assessment, decision-making and measure implementation. As a means of supporting the disaster assessment, we are developing a real time earthquake damage estimation system to fill in the gaps in actual damage information immediately after an earthquake strikes, information collection terminals for efficiently gathering damage information, and a communications system that can reliably transmit information without congestion. To support decision-making, we are developing an emergency response demand calculation system. This system can calculate the amount of resources necessary for a particular emergency response.
Our future plans include developing an emergency response support system for rational decision-making, and the accurate and efficient implementation of measures, even under circumstances that are changing by the hour.
