Post-Disaster Recovery Efforts in Japan and New Zealand: What Worked Well? What Hasn't?

Abstract

Natural disasters present significant threats to the infrastructure, economy, and most importantly, people. Land-use planning is fundamental to post-disaster management and the effects are often reflected in the efficiency of the policies and regulations in place. Post-disaster management in Japan is arguably regarded as the state of art, and this research seeks to evaluate the planning frameworks and policies that were developed in response to the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami in Tōhoku, Japan. Disaster management comes in four stages: Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery. Mitigation measures can include a soft or hard approach. A softer approach can include maintaining the protective natural features such as sand dunes, wetlands and forests. A harder approach ranges from building retaining walls on hillslopes to sea walls in the coastal environments. Preparedness on the other hand, include educating the communities in case of an emergency; and responses to a disaster are often short-term measures such as providing food and water. This research intends to focus on the final stage of disaster management- recovery. The recovery stage involves responses to not just the physical destruction, but also the social and economic repercussions from natural disasters. This requires major financial and scientific inputs from a range of sectors, including the national government. A comparison of the disaster management frameworks between Japan and New Zealand is carried out to determine whether these policies have been effective in practice and to identify where improvements can be made to disaster management in New Zealand following the 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake.