Journal of Natural Disaster Science, Volume 27, Number 2, 2005, pp59-65

59

How Can Stakeholders Visions for Rebuilding a Community be Compiled into a Plan?
Recovery and Reconstruction Planning in Ojiya City
Norio MAKI and Haruo HAYASHI
Research Center for Disaster Reduction Systems, DPRI, Kyoto University(Received for 10 Jun., 2005 and in revised from 10 Jan., 2006)

ABSTRACTThe goal of this paper is to develop techniques to establish comprehensive disaster recovery and reconstruction
planning with stakeholder involvement. This paper deals with disaster recovery and the reconstruction planning
process in Ojiya City, which was heavily affected by the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake Disaster. Disasterrecovery and reconstruction planning is a process of compiling ideas or visions of stakeholders of an affected community into a plan. There are two aspects in planning; one is how the ideas of stakeholders are compiled into aplan to secure comprehensiveness, and the other is how a feasible plan is established. This paper will discussthese two aspects in planning from a case study of recovery and reconstruction planning in Ojiya City. A participatory planning scheme was adopted for the planning to accomplish the first aspects, and a strategic plan scheme
was used to accomplish the second aspects. Comprehensive recovery and reconstruction from the 2005 Niigata
Chuetsu Earthquake Disaster for Ojiya City based on a strategic plan framework was successfully developed
through five stakeholder workshops. A goal statement of the plan is making Ojiya better than before the earthquake. Six objectives comprising 1) Life Recovery, 2) Economic Recovery, 3) Infrastructure Restoration, 4)
Community Empowerment, 5) Disaster Management, and 6) Citizen Participation were clarified through workshops as tasks to realize the goal, and 31 polices and 72 programs were established as tools to realize the six objectives.

1. INTRODUCTION
There is a long history of disaster recovery and reconstruction
planning. After the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906, recovery
and reconstruction plans that intended a complete change of theurban structure of San Francisco based on the City Beautiful
concept were proposed, but the plans failed to be adopted (Burby,J., Raymond Ed. (1999)). Every city that has suffered severe damage from natural disasters and man-made disasters such as war andterrorist attack establish recovery and reconstruction plans. Japan
also has a long history of disaster recovery and reconstruction planning. After the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, a dramatic disaster recovery and reconstruction plan intending to renovate Tokyo
as modern city was primarily proposed by the central government s
planning group led by Shinpei Goto. Unfortunately the plan could
not be adopted because of budgetary constraints. Moreover, many
cities that suffered damage during WW2 established a recovery andreconstruction plan. The characteristics of these plans such as
those of San Francisco and Tokyo and recovery reconstructionplans from WW2 are all Physical reconstruction plans. These
plans deal with the recovery and reconstruction of urban infrastructures such as road networks and land use.
An important lesson from recovery and reconstruction after
the Kobe earthquake in 1995 is that coordination among physicalrecovery and reconstruction, community empowerment, and economic revitalization is very important to accomplish recovery andreconstruction from disaster, and stakeholder involvement in planning is essential (Hayashi, H. 2000). The same aspects are pointed

out on the recovery and reconstruction of the WTC building, whichcollapsed due to a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001
(Mammen, D. 2005). Now, a holistic perspective and stakeholder
involvement are required in a disaster recovery and reconstruction
plan.
There is much discussion regarding the visions and management of Physical recovery and reconstruction plans. However,comprehensiveness and stakeholder involvement are newissues in recovery and reconstruction planning. There has been
research on comprehensive planning with stakeholder involvement
to accomplish a community s future vision in usual situations.
There are two concerns in planning; one is already mentioned,
which is how the ideas of stakeholders are compiled into a plan andhow the plan can be made comprehensive, and the other is how
a feasible plan can be established. A strategic planning scheme iscurrently commonly used to establish a feasible plan in the field ofplanning (Hoch, C.J. ed. (2000)). Although the feasibility of theplan would suffer due to the societal situation, ensuring the feasibility of the established plan in the planning phase is important. In
strategic planning, current situation analysis considering both
external and internal factors is conducted to minimize disruption
due to social factors.
The goal of this paper is to develop techniques to establish
comprehensive and feasible disaster recovery and reconstruction
planning with stakeholder involvement. This paper clarifies how
these two concerns regarding planning such as comprehensivenessand feasibility were successfully accomplished in the recovery andreconstruction plan for Ojiya City from the case study of recovery

KEY WORDS: Stakeholder Involvement, Recovery and Reconstruction Planning, 2004 Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake, Strategic Planning60

N. MAKI AND H. HAYASHI

and reconstruction planning in Ojiya City.
2. DAMAGE TO OJIYA CITY FROM THE 2004
NIIGATA CHUETSU EARTHQUAKE
Ojiya City was heavily affected by the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu
Earthquake Disaster Table 1 shows damage situation of Ojiya
City. Thirteen peopled were killed and more than 3,000 houses
suffered major damage. Characteristic damage in Ojiya City is asfollows. In addition to physical damage due to the earthquake,social disruption and economic loss affected the community, andseveral societal issues on post-event operation such as relief andrecovery were raised. The following are topics for Ojiya City on
damage, loss and societal issues in post-event operations.
1) The ratio of heavy + severe + moderate and slight is 1:2 (Incase of the 1995 Kobe Earthquake, it was 1:1.)
2) An evacuation order continued in several districts for morethan one year.
3) Private companies suffered severe economic loss, especially hitech companies making computers.
4) Many temporary housing residents tried to reconstruct theirindividual housing.

stakeholders were compiled into the plan.
To make the plan feasible and effective, a strategic planningscheme is dominant in the field of planning as a planning tool. It
starts from situation analysis that analyzes the present situationof organizations both from the internal aspects of organizations andthe external aspects around organizations. SWOT analysis is usually used as the situation analysis method. In the process of SWOT
analysis, assessment on the internal resources of organizations,
their strengths and weaknesses, and on the external situation
around organizations, opportunity and thread is analyzed.
According to the results of SWOT analysis, objectives of the plan
as tools to accomplish the set goal of the plan could be decided. In
the strategic planning process, all the contents are decided using an
objective-oriented approach. It means all the contents of the plan
will be decided as tools to accomplish one higher level of content,
for example, policies being countermeasures to accomplish anobjective. Fig. 1 shows the planning and contents structure of astrategic plan.

3. TWO ESSENTIAL CONSIDERATIONS IN PLANNING
Recovery and reconstruction planning is a process to summarize the visions and ideas of stakeholders on recovery from disaster, and a document organizing these visions and ideas is a plan.
The established plan needs to be implemented to realize the contents of the plan. So, the plan structure should be feasible andeffective as well as being a reflection of stakeholders visions andideas. In this paper, the planning process for the reconstruction andrecovery plan of Ojiya City will be evaluated from two perspectives: 1) How the manageability and effectiveness of the plan was
secured, and 2) How successfully various visions and ideas ofFig. 1 Structure of a Strategic Plan

Table 1. Damage situation of Ojiya City (as of January 31, 2006)

HOW CAN STAKEHOLDERS VISIONS FOR REBUILDING A COMMUNITY BE COMPILED INTO A PLAN?
RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING IN OJIYA CITY

Fig. 2 Workshops as a tool for participatory planning

Fig. 3 Structure of the Ojiya Recovery and Reconstruction Plan

The second point of planning is how successfully various
visions and ideas of stakeholders were compiled into the plan.
Participation of stakeholders in the planning process is essential toreflect stakeholders visions and ideas in the plan. The first step ofparticipatory planning is Idea Generation. Through this process,the imagined visions and ideas of stakeholders are transformed intoa statement and shared among stakeholders. The second step ofparticipatory planning is Structuralizing Ideas. Their visions
and ideas collected through the Idea Generation process need to
be structured as a plan. The final step of participatory planning is
Building Consensus on structured ideas. Fig. 2 shows the planning process from a participation viewpoint. The following chapters will discuss how two aspects of the plan, manageability andstakeholder participation, were realized in the recovery and reconstruction planning in Ojiya.
There are various techniques such as the causal relation diagram, brain storming, and idea grouping (KJ method) to manage
the above-mentioned objectives. The points are how these techniques are compiled into the whole planning process to establish acomprehensive plan with stakeholder involvement. This paper discusses how these techniques are used in the whole planning context.

Table 2. Outline of Workshop

4. HOW WAS A MANAGABLE AND EFFECTIVE
PLAN ESTABLISHED? STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS OF THE OJIYA RECOVERYAND RECONSTRUCTION PLAN
4.1 PLANNING PROCESS
A five-layered strategic plan, which consisted of one goalstatement and 6 objective statements, was established through fiveseries of workshops (Fig. 3). Table 2 shows an outline of each
workshop.
Present situation analysis of the city was conducted both at the
1 st administrators 'workshop and the 1 st citizens workshop.
Through these workshops, points of consideration about recovery
and reconstruction reflecting the present situation of the community were clarified.
At the 2nd and 3rd administrators workshop, 1) objectives wereset based on situation analysis and 2) ideas that were generated by
the administrators and citizens were structured by a means-and-end

61

relationship according to a strategic planning framework. The
draft recovery and reconstruction plan of Ojiya City was established through these processes.
Citizens reviewed the draft plan at the 2nd citizen workshop.
They added new ideas to the draft plan and prioritized the contentsof the program level (ref. Fig. 3) through citizen perspectives.
Finally, the Ojiya Recovery and Reconstruction Plan (Draft) wasestablished. The following sections will explain step by step how
the participation of stakeholders was managed at each workshop.
4.2 STEP 1: SITUATION ANALYSIS OF THE COMMUNITY FOR RECOVERY AND RECOSTRUCTION (1st, 2ndAdministrators WS, and 1st Citizens WS)
For situation analysis on recovery and reconstruction, SWOT
analysis was used at the administrators workshops and at the citizens workshop, simplified-method was used, where participants
responded to the following issues: 1) Things to be settled andrecovered; 2) Things to be avoided, quitted, and altered; 3) Things
to be maintained; and 4) Things to be developed and summarized.
From the SWOT analysis by administrators, six points to beconsidered for recovery and reconstruction of the city were developed. As external factors, the following three points were clarified.
1) Now the city is a well known community because of the impact
of disaster.

62

N. MAKI AND H. HAYASHI

Fig. 4 STATUS ANALYSIS OF THE COMMUNITY

2) Damage and loss due to the disaster3) Good management of the recovery and reconstruction process;citizens involvement; avoiding a budget crisis and local economy-based recovery
As internal factors, the following three points were developed.
1) There are rich local assets for recovery; there is a good naturalenvironment such as snow and scenic beauty, good people,
food, and traditional crafts.
2) Aging demographic structure of the community
3) Budgetary constraints
Cross checking on points of consideration based on situation
analysis by administrators and citizens was conducted. This foundwhether points that were generated from the workshop by theadministrators and citizens were synchronized. In addition, comparison with the recovery and reconstruction vision that was
published by the prefectural government was conducted. From thiscomparison, safety issues that were pointed out by the Niigata
Prefecture Government were lacking in the situation analysis in thecommunity, and safety issues were added as points of consideration.
The above-mentioned six points and safety, a total of sevenpoints, were clarified as points of consideration for recovery andreconstruction planning for the city. The planning process in thisstep is summarized in Fig. 4.
4.3 STEP 2 SETTING OBJECTIVES OF THE PLAN (2nd and3rd Administrators Workshop)
According to results of the situation analysis, the objectives of
the recovery and reconstruction plan were set. Using the matrix(Fig. 5) that was developed through the situation analysis, ideas on
recovery and reconstruction generated both from administratorsand citizens were organized. At first, these ideas were sorted into
corresponding cells of the matrix. For example, ideas such as

Promoting Ojiya products using the name of the city that is now
famous for disaster impact will be sorted into the cell corresponding to Famous Community by Using the Local Resources.
After sorting out the ideas, the ideas were organized into tree structures reflecting the strategic planning structure shown in Fig. 3.
Finally, the following six sentences were developed as the objectives of the plan.
1) Life Recovery: Restore daily life and make the community safer.
2) Economic Recovery: Revitalize the local economy using the richnatural resources of the community.
3) Infrastructure Restoration: Make a safer social infrastructure.
4) Community Empowerment: Empower the local community thathas worked as a mutual-aid system after the disaster.
5) Disaster Management: Establish a disaster-resilient community.
6) Smart recovery and reconstruction management: Establish citizens involvement, avoid a budgetary crisis, and accomplish
recovery of the community that could be proudly announced to
the world.
4.4 STEP 3 STRUCTURING IDEAS ACCORDING TO A
STRATEGIC PLANNING FRAMEWORK(3rd Administrators Workshop)
At the 3rd administrators workshop, ideas that were generated
by administrators and citizens were structured by a means-and-end
relationship according to a strategic planning framework. So, ideas
to accomplish the Objectives were sorted into Policies, andideas to accomplish Policies were sorted into Programs. New
ideas were also added in this process, and in the higher layer ofplan, such as Policy and Program statements, several ideas weresummarized into one set of contents. The draft recovery andreconstruction plan of Ojiya City as shown in Fig. 3 was established through these processes. The draft plan consisted of six

HOW CAN STAKEHOLDERS VISIONS FOR REBUILDING A COMMUNITY BE COMPILED INTO A PLAN?
RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING IN OJIYA CITY

63

Fig. 5 Planning Matrix

4.6 STEP 4 MAKING THE DRAFT PLAN MANAGABLE(Policy Working Group, Action Plan Working Group andDrafting Committee)

Fig. 6 Citizen s perspectives and Experts perspective

objectives, 31 polices, and 72 programs.
4.5 STEP 4 REVIEWING DRAFT RECOVERY AND
RECONSTRCUTION PLAN OF THE COMMUNITY(2nd Citizens Workshop)
In this step, citizens first reviewed the draft plan and added
120 new programs into the draft plan. Following citizen reviewing, prioritization of the contents at the Program level was conducted. There are two perspectives on prioritization. One is theperspective of citizens as stakeholders, and the other is the perspective of experts, which mean administrators, engineers, planners,
and local bosses as specialists in implementing the plan in the projects (Fig. 5). Programs selected by citizens were called
Important programs and those selected by specialists were called
Critical Programs. At the 2nd citizen workshop, prioritization by
citizens of the perspectives was conducted. A total of 81 programsout of 192 (72 programs from the draft plan and 120 programs
added by citizens) was selected as important programs.
Prioritization by citizens was conducted by voting by citizens oneach program. Programs that received more than 50% of agreement of citizens to be prioritized were selected as important programs.

Through five workshops comprising three administrators
workshops and two citizens workshops, the Draft Ojiya Recovery
and Reconstruction Plan was established. To make the plan morefeasible, an Action plan that defines the agency or division responsible and the deadline for program completion should be established. The structure of the Action Plan will be shown in Table 3.
Through discussions within the Working Group, the Action Plan
was established.
Two working groups comprising the Policy Working Groupand the Action Plan Working Group were organized for completing
the Action Plan. Volunteer citizens and administrators worked
together within the Action Plan Working Group to finalize theAction Plan. The Action Plan Working Group consisted of threegroups. Group 1 dealt with recovery and reconstruction on individual, welfare, health, and disaster preparedness issue and consistedof 25 members who were 11 volunteer citizens and 14 administrators. Group 2 dealt with industry, the economy, and lifelines andconsisted of 32 members who were 18 volunteer citizens and 14
administrators. Group 3 dealt with neighborhood community,
management of recovery and reconstruction, budget, and citizens
involvement and consisted of 22 members who were 11 volunteer
citizens and 11 administrators. The Policy Working Group washeaded by the city manager and directors of the city government,
and advisors from academia were members of this group.
Another task for making the plan feasible is the formalization
process of the draft plan. To implement the plan, the agreement oflocal bosses is essential. The Drafting Committee consisted of various sectors within the community such as city council members,
prefectural assembly members, health and medical organizations,
local commercial organizations, and committees on community
master plans, etc were also established for these tasks.

64

N. MAKI AND H. HAYASHI

Table 3. Structure of the Action Plan

Table 4. Process for making the Action Plan and formalizing the draft plan

Coordination of the Drafting Committee was also managed by the
Policy Working Group. The process for making the Action Plan
and formalizing the draft plan will be shown in Table 4.

Table 5. Idea Generation

5. HOW THE IMAGES OF STAKEHOLDERSARE COMPILED INTO THE PLAN
In the previous chapter, the planning process was summarizedfrom the viewpoint of making a plan feasible and effective. This
chapter discusses another point in planning, which is how successfully the images of stakeholders are compiled into a plan.
The first step of participatory planning is Idea Generation.
Through this process, imagined visions and ideas of stakeholders
transformed into a statement and shared among stakeholders. The
Idea Generation process was managed through various systems:
1) Submitting their ideas and visions on recovery and reconstruction to the planning body, the municipal government; 2)
Participating in planning workshops; and 3) Participating in community meetings held in their neighborhood community. Ideas on

the recovery and reconstruction of the community were gathered
through six occasions. Table 5 shows the number of ideas generated on each occasion. A total of 1,690 ideas were generated fromstakeholders.
The second step of participatory planning is Structuralizing
Ideas. Their visions and idea collected through the Idea
Generation process need to be structured as a plan. In the case of
Ojiya planning, generated ideas were organized from various view-

HOW CAN STAKEHOLDERS VISIONS FOR REBUILDING A COMMUNITY BE COMPILED INTO A PLAN?
RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING IN OJIYA CITY

65

Fig. 7 How the ideas of stakeholders were compiled into the plan

points comprising 1) present situation analysis, 2) abstractness ofideas, which means sorting ideas using a means-and-end relationship, and 3) priority for implementation.
The final step of participatory planning is Building
Consensus on structured ideas. Consensus building on the structured results was conducted at the end of each workshop by obtaining the approval of participants of the workshop.
By going through these steps several times, a recovery andreconstruction plan of Ojiya City was established. The following
chapters will discuss how two aspects of planning, manageability
and participation, were secured in the planning process. Fig. 7
shows the process on how ideas are compiled into the plan.
All the generated ideas and the results of each workshop werehanded over the next workshop and used as a kick-off point of theworkshops. All 1690 ideas were structured in the plan and the
Ojiya Recovery and Reconstruction Plan was published on July 19,
2005, 8 months later of the event.
6. DISCUSSION
This paper introduces how the 1690 stakeholders ideas on
recovery and reconstruction of the community were summed up
into the plan according to a strategic planning framework from theviewpoints of 1) how manageability and effectiveness of the plan
were secured, and 2) how successfully various visions and ideas ofstakeholders were compiled into the plan from a case study inOjiya recovery and reconstruction planning.
There are several future challenges of this planning scheme.
One is how performance measures of the plan will be developed.
In this case study, we failed to set performance measures of theplan because we could not reach agreement with the city government that had performance measures. If performance measures areset, we should develop a way measuring them. Another issue is
how we can evaluate the advantages of this planning scheme.
These future challenges will be discussed in another paper.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ojiya City Recovery and Reconstruction Planning was established through collaborative work among specialist group, administrators of Ojiya City Government and citizens of Ojiya City. We
would like to deeply thank those who joined the planning process.
To specialists group: Shigeo TATSUKI of Faculty of Social
Studies, Dohshisya University, Kishie SHIGEKAWA and Satoshi
TANAKA of Collage of Environment & Disaster Research, Fuji
Tokoha University, Keiko TAMURA of Center for Natural
Hazards and Recovery, Niigata University, Masahiro SAWADA of
Nagaoka Institute of Design, Ikuo KOBAYASHI of Co-operative
Planners Associates and Syhosuke SATO, Research Center for
Disaster Reduction Systems DPRI, Kyoto University
To Ojiya City Government
To workshop participants
I hope Ojiya City would recover from the disaster and be abetter community than before by accomplishing visions describedin the plan.
REFERENCES
Burby, J., Raymond Ed. (1999) Cooperating with Nature: Confronting
Natural Hazards with Land-Use Planning for Sustainable
Communities, Joseph Henry Press book.
Hoch, C.J. ed. (2000) The Practice of Local Government Planning, pp.2526, International City/County Management Association.
Hayashi, Haruo (2000) Inochi wo Mamoru Bousai Gaku, Iwanami Press (inJapanese).
Mammen, David (2005) Recovery: Lessons from New York and 9/11/01,
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Urban Disaster
Reduction, CD-ROM.
Ojiya City: Ojiya Recovery and Reconstruction Plan, Ojiya City, 2005.