Journal of JSCE, Vol. 1, 276-285, 2013
Special Topic - 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (Invited Paper)

RELATIONSHIP OF PEOPLE AND
INFRASTRUCTURE DURING THE 3.11
EARTHQUAKE WITH INFORMATIONTECHNOLOGY AS MEDIATING CHANNEL
Yoshihide SEKIMOTO1
1

Member of JSCE, Associate Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo
(4-6-1, Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan)
E-mail: sekimoto@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 resulted in not only 19,000 deaths and missing
persons, mainly in the Tohoku Region, but also the evacuation of more than 400,000 people during thepeak period. Although such disasters are very rare, creating robust civil engineering structures to prevent
potential threats would be a diﬃcult task.
On the other hand, even though information and communication technologies are just one of the means
available, they have significant potential in terms of organically connecting support from people in a varietyof capacities when an emergency arises. From this perspective, keywords such as “evacuation training,”“group relocation,” “real-time tsunami sensing,” and “soft disaster preventions” emerged as a result of thisearthquake.
I would like to describe how people utilize information and communication technologies as a mediating
channel to secure their safety and security during earthquakes, whether autonomously or at other times
through the protection provided by infrastructure facilities. In particular, the emergency mapping technology involving manual preparation as well as input from probe cars is introduced in Section 2 as a successful
example of how information technology could serve as a mediating channel. Furthermore, in Section 3, I
will describe the activities for the Open Government that did not necessarily function as a mediating channel but remain major issues for the future. In Section 4, the mobile phone technology is discussed in order
to consider how mediating channels can be provided on a real-time basis, with consideration for the future.
Key Words : Great East Japan Earthquake, information technology, emergency mapping, open government, people flow, mobile phone data

1. BACKGROUND

metropolitan district in the world, should be structured in order to avoid major havoc when a large-scaledisaster occurs.
Although such disasters are very rare, creating robust civil engineering structures to prevent potential
threats would be a diﬃcult task. From this perspective, keywords such as “evacuation training,” “group
relocation,” “real-time tsunami sensing,” and “softdisaster preventions” emerged as a result of this earthquake.
On the other hand, even though information andcommunication technologies are just one of themeans available, they have significant potential interms of organically connecting support from people in a variety of capacities when an emergency
arises. The recovery support platform, based on volunteers, the website sinsai.info, and the Automobile

The Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11,2011 resulted in not only 19,000 deaths and missing
persons, mainly in the Tohoku Region, but also theevacuation of more than 400,000 people during thepeak period. In addition, people’s daily lives wereaﬀected significantly by the enormity of the disaster, which had a complex nature and comprised earthquakes, tsunamis, and a nuclear power plant accident.
Furthermore, a variety of hazards for moving traﬃcoccurred in the Tokyo metropolitan area on the day ofthe earthquake, resulting in commuters being forced
to perform actions that diﬀered drastically from their
daily routine, due to, for instance, diﬃculties in returning to their homes. We could consider this a lesson on how the urban system of Tokyo, the largest

276

Traﬃc Performance Information Map produced by
ITS Japan, which summarizes the probe car information provided by various automobile industries, is already known to many people as oﬀering an overview
of the overall trends and conveying daily changes instatus.
Since the recovery status of the communication facilities and other conditions related to infrastructureduring earthquakes are already described in the Special Issue of the Journal of Information Processing1)
and similar reports, in this paper I would like to describe how people utilize information and communication technologies as a mediating channel to secure
their safety and security during earthquakes, sometimes autonomously and at other times through theprotection provided by social infrastructure facilities.
In particular, the emergency mapping technology involving manual preparation as well as input fromprobe cars is introduced in Section 2 as a successful
example of how information technology could serve
as a mediating channel. Furthermore, in Section 3, I
will describe the activities for the Open Governmentthat did not necessarily function as a mediating channel but remain major issues for the future. In Section
4, the mobile phone technology is discussed in order
to consider how mediating channels can be provided
on a real-time basis, with consideration for the future.

Fig.1 Sinsai.info (http://sinsai.info) for crisis mapping.

ple indicated that cloud sourcing technology, whichfacilitates not only the contributions of information
by some experts but also information brought in byordinary people, functions appropriately even in theevent of an emergency.
There are other websites that have been in operation
since immediately after the disaster, such as the Great
East Japan Earthquake Cooperation Information Platform3) created by the National Research Institute for
Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, and the Emergency Mapping Team (EMT) created by the Disaster
Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University.4)

2. EMERGENCY MAPPING(1) Life-support information
The first website to be cited as an example for
emergency mapping is sinsai.info (http://sinsai.
info). This site was launched three hours after theearthquake occurred, primarily by the Open Street
Map Foundation, Japan, and others who support theJapanese branch of the volunteer-based map known
as Open Street Map, which is created on a global
scale (Fig. 1).2) The experience of launching a site
shortly after the earthquake in Haiti, just prior to thisdisaster, was considerably useful. The system uses
a simple web GIS software that has an open source,
known as the Ushahidi, to make it possible to post
necessary information, such as the locations of lifelines and evacuation centers, as well as details on thesafety and whereabouts of people in real time, immediately following the disaster and ahead of everybody else. The information is provided by a varietyof people via Twitter, email, and forum entries on thewebsite, as well as via other information websites.
Furthermore, an attempt is being made to transmit
information overseas, with proactive multi-languagetranslation content. This groundbreaking case exam-(2) Road recovery status obtained using probe
car
Roads are networks. Fragmented witness information oﬀers an insuﬃcient amount of information, so
understanding the status of roads is diﬃcult. ITSJapan, a non-profit organization, therefore collected
the positioning information of vehicles to determine
whether traﬃc could pass on individual roads andprovided such information, which was updated every
day, as the Automobile Traﬃc Performance Information Map.5) The innovative aspect of this is that suchprobe car information in the past was given by the individual users of car navigational systems, provided
by each automobile manufacturer, so the information
was obviously guarded by each company. Such information, however, was collected and consolidated intoa single system, due to swift action taken by Honda,
Toyota, Nissan, Panasonic, and ITS Japan. Taking
into consideration the number of users with each company as well as the operating status of the cars after

277

apping.

probe

witness
mount off roads isanization,mation ofd pass on

Fig.3 Railway recovery map as of Sep. 3, 2012 (http://
www.tetsudo.com/special/disaster2011/).
Blue lines show recovered sections and red means
unrecovered.

Fig.Automobile
2: AutomobileTraﬃc
TrafficPerformance
Performance Information
Map
Information
Map
Fig.2
provided by ITS Japan (http://www.its-jp.
org/saigai/). Red “X” marks show road traﬃcpoints regulated by each local government. Bluelines illustrate roads where more than a vehicle had
passed in one day, in this case, April 13, 2011, fromprobe vehicle information integrated with each commercial vehicle company.

3. OPEN GOVERNMENT FOR COLLABORATIVE WORKS(1) Need for machine-readable data
The above descriptions were for a case that worked
well with a system established by the private sector.
Detailed information provided by the authorities, on
the other hand, is the only reliable information during a state of confusion; yet such information is often
produced in PDF and other such formats that are undeniably not very conducive for reuse. Fig. 4 shows
the posting status of traﬃc restrictions on the web,which was made available every day by the civil engineering departments of each disaster-stricken prefecture after the earthquake occurred. Display formats varied, with some using tables produced with
html coding, while the others used speech balloons
on maps to provide descriptions. Raw data were also
not made available, which made it diﬃcult for others
to use the data. In the case of Miyagi Prefecture, nonprofit organizations were reformatting information onmaps acquired from Google Maps. Furthermore, theGeographical Survey Institute overlapped such traﬃc
restriction information, issued by local governments
as described above, on the Automobile Traﬃc Performance Information Map shown in Fig. 2, to makethe automobile traﬃc performance information more
eﬀective. I have heard, however, that even in this instance the work by the Geographical Survey Institutea disaster, it would not have been possible for any
one company to gain an overall status of the performance of automobile traﬃc. In such circumstances,such a decisive measure was extremely innovative. In
fact, when the road network was fragmented following the earthquake disaster, the ability to obtain information that reveals at a glance where transportation ispossible was significantly useful for logistics. This
information was updated every day until April 28,
2011. Information was thereafter also provided continuously when Typhoon Talas struck in Septemberof the same year; therefore, this trend of publicly disclosing data for public welfare when a disaster strikes
is likely to continue.
(3) Railway recovery status
Finally, a railroad recovery map is being produced
by Asahi Interactive, a private-sector organization.
This system automatically detects and displays updates on pages that feature railway traﬃc information
provided by the web pages of railway companies, because it seems easier to some extent to gain an understanding of the recovery of the railway if information
is given on a daily basis.

278

which is an issue for the future.

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However, currently not much data can be madepublicly available by the government. Therefore, theAssociation for Promotion of Infrastructure
Geospatial Information Distribution (AIGID)(http://aigid.jp),a) Miyagi pref.led by me, petitioned administrative
governments, such as the national, prefectural, andto share data among theData provision
requestData provisionand registration

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sociation’s members on a daily basis. In order to realize this, an environment that facilitates the routine
distribution of data has been made available with aframework and, as a rule, the association bears thecosts related to the platform to achieve this, as well as
the processing of the original data (Fig. 5). In fact, asof August 10, 2012, 84 member organizations haveparticipated in this program, with approximately 40
data sets registered.
Furthermore, although this framework is intended
to be shared among the members as a general rule, aninquiry as to whether it would be possible to disclosesuch data to external parties for a certain period oftime during a major disaster (disclosure on the Internet) was made when the petition was made. A majordisaster, say the earthquake described here, would besomething at a magnitude of 6; in the case of rain, it
would be an hourly total rainfall of 2,000 mm, and thedisclosure period would be 1 month. This resulted in
the acquisition of approval for providing data to external parties at the time of major disasters from a totalof 95% of the organizations at a prefectural level thathave agreed to share their data to start with, which
excludes three organizations but includes a total of 55
organizations; 14 of these organizations provide uninteresting data, 11 organizations provide forestry data,and 30 organizations provide road construction drawings. Relying entirely on the government increases
their burden, in consideration of the current situation
where governments are required to cut back on theirbudgets and reduce personnel. The provision of suchsupport by a new public sector would be highly desirable in order to make it possible for the administrative governments to concentrate on proactively creating forward-looking determinations and making decisions, which would be considerably closer to the workthat they should be doing in the first place.

b) Iwate pref.

c) Fukushima pref.

Fig.4 Road traﬃc regulation information from three prefectures.

involved manually consolidating the information obtained from local governments.
Various parties made suggestions regarding suchproblems immediately after the earthquake, statingthat “raw data” and “machine-readable information”
should be made available.6) However, these suggestions could not be implemented easily. This is associated with global trends of the past few years suchas Open Data and Open Government, and is not limited to such occasions as when a disaster occurs. In
order to make an application example that works fast,
the information issued by the government would haveto be proactively disclosed, except for personal information or information that is substantially concernedwith national security, which is an issue for the future.
(2) Need for infrastructure data
However, currently not much data can be madepublicly available by the government.
Therefore, the Association for Promotion of Infrastructure
Geospatial Information Distribution (AIGID) (http://aigid.jp), led by me, petitioned administrative
governments, such as the national, prefectural, andmunicipal governments, to share data among the as-(3) Digital archiving for the next generation
After a considerable amount of time has passed following a disaster, the issue becomes, “How should the279

Shape files that offer GIS data and Excel files
lessons learned be passed on to future generations?”
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files of almost 90 types comprising more than 200 GB
of data. In terms of page numbers, photographic images comprise the highest amount of data, but there
are also many Shape files that oﬀer GIS data and Excel files containing survey forms (it should be noted,
however, that these figures may change in the future,as they represent the registration status, and there may
be responsive action taken if defective data are identified).
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diagram represents the status of the structural damage
to the individual buildings using house-shaped polygons to represent the shapes of the buildings, with thestructure of the buildings, the intended uses, and disaster damage categories recorded as attributes. It isextremely significant that not only the detailed dataobtained from the reports but also the GIS data ofsuch recovery support surveys on disaster-stricken local governments, collected meticulously by the nation, are appropriately retained as records and madewidely available.
Although the disclosure attributes of such data
would in the end depend on the intention of the sourceof the surveys (the MLIT), as well as the willingnessof the local governments subject to the surveys, as a
general rule it is considered to be for public disclosure and it has been decided that free use, including280

theMethods
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Mobile Spatial Statistical Image:Distribution of Population in 23 Wards in Tokyo(Weekday at 13:00 hours)
Shinjuku
Shibuya

Ikebukuro
Tokyo

Ueno

Population scale
0 1,500
1,501 5,000
5,001 15,000
15,001 30,000
30,001 140,000

Fig.7 Mobile Spatial Statistics by NTT DoCoMo(http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/corporate/
disclosure/mobile_spatial_statistics/).

undertaking for mobile spatial statistics following theearthquake, although it is currently still in a tentative
stage (Fig. 7).
The use of GPS data stored in mobile phones, on
the other hand, requires the approval of individuals since it involves the Telecommunication Business
Law. The Traﬃc Congestion Statistical Data⃝R of
ZENRIN DataCom are data based on the GPS dataacquired from the Auto GPS function provided by
NTT DoCoMo, which is processed to conceal theidentity of individuals in order to ensure that theycannot be identified. The number of persons eligible is considered to be somewhere between 700,000
to 800,000, which is equivalent to more than 0.5% of
the population, and the shortest data upload interval
is once in five minutes. A number of results obtained
from an analysis conducted by my associates and me,using disaggregated data obtained through a collaboration with ZENRIN DataCom, covers one year (centered around the day on which the earthquake disasteroccurred) under the condition that individual persons
should not be identified.
Fig. 8 represents the visualization of movement andcompares the statuses before and after 1 446 hours,
the time at which the earthquake occurred. Colors
have been assigned for each direction in which GPS
units were moving, revealing how people were actively moving in a variety of directions prior to theearthquake and how there was an abundant number ofdots in large concentrations. Immediately following
the earthquake, on the other hand, movements ceased
to exist and hardly any colors were visible; the number of dots also decreased.
When the total number of GPS units were col-4. PEOPLE FLOW STATUS THROUGH
MOBILE PHONES
Sections 2 and 3 have basically provided descriptions of the issues that arise a few days, weeks, ordecades after an earthquake, but is there anything thatcan be done on a more real-time basis? Furthermore,potential disasters are not limited to earthquakes andtsunamis. Could there be any universal responsive
strategies based on real-timeliness?
Mobile phones fulfilled a certain role by providing a means to verify the safety of people during the
March 2011 earthquake; this may be the only available tool in the possession of a large number of people
that can be used to transmit certain information andgain an understanding of the status of a large numberof people in real-time.
(1) People movement on the day of disaster
Methods used for understanding the positional status of people using mobile phones can be largely categorized into those that use base station informationand those that use GPS. Since the former provide positional information for nearby base stations, although
positional accuracy is not too high, it is possible togain an insight into the distribution status of all people
who possess mobile phones subscribed to applicablecommunication service providers. NTT DoCoMo, forinstance, actually disclosed the number of people, interms of altitude, using mesh units as their statistical

281

a) Example of a person who kept on
walking along the National Road.

Home(0:06)

It appears that he simply kept on
walking on National Road No. 6.
Officeb) Example of a person with unclear
routing between sections.

OfficeFig.8 Comparison of flow status for people before and after earthquake (provided by Mr. Ueyama as project
researcher, University of Tokyo). Top: Status immediately before earthquake, at 1 445 hours; Bottom:
Status immediately after earthquake, at 1 457 hours;
movements to various directions decreased and thenumber of dots, which indicate movements, also decreased.

It is possible that he used a car or train toenter the metropolitan center at one point.

Home(5:52)

Hourly transition of GPS data
800,000

2011-03-10

700,000

2011-03-11

Amount of GPS data

600,000
500,000
400,000!"#$!

300,000
200,000

Fig.10 Examples of people returning home from work on
the day the earthquake disaster occurred, based on
GPS data. (Home and oﬃce locations were extracted from data spanning a one-year period in advance, followed by a selection of people who had
at least 20 points of GPS data immediately after
the earthquake, until the following morning): a)
Person believed to have walked home by walking
along the main road. b) Person whose movements
between sections are unclear.

100,000
0Time

Fig.9 Mobile phone GPS status on disaster day.

lected and verified, it was shown that the number was
about one-fifth of the number during normal times, as
shown in Fig. 9.
Even though the amount of GPS data on the dayon which the earthquake occurred was not very large,
one could still see the movement of individual persons, at least in fragments. Fig. 10 shows the plottingof two people selected from among those observed
to have had a large amount of GPS data (people who
had in excess of 20 points immediately after the earth-quake occurred). Grids in which each of these people
existed, with a high frequency during the night andday, were designated “Home” or “Oﬃce” on the basis of track records spanning more than a year. As aresult, Fig. 10 a) reveals that one of these persons left
the Oﬃce (in the vicinity of Otemachi) in the evening
and just kept on walking along National Route No. 6282

the earthquake. Actually, in 2012, many areas wereuntil he reachedHome (invicinity
crowdedwith visitors.
Wethe
would
likeoftoMatsudo)
introduceat
approximately 0000 hours. Fig. 10 b) shows that theother person left the Oﬃce in the vicinity of Iruma,
intentionally going via the central metropolitan area
to arrive home at about 0600 hours in the suburb ofTokyo (Nishi-Tokyo). However, the details of thepaths taken by the second person are unclear (refer
to Sekimoto et al. (2012)10) for details).
(2) Daily evacuation activity in Fukushima
The evacuation activity on the day of the disastercan be understood by using the same GPS data. Fig.
11 illustrates the activity at night (0–6 am) of people
who live in the cities in the evacuation-prepared area.
It clearly identifies the evacuation processes of thisparticular zone. Fig. 11 a) describes the normal situation before the nuclear accident occurred on March
It appears
he simply
kept on in
11; Fig. 11 b) shows thesuddenthat
decreasein activity
walking on National Road No. 6.
the area the day after the disaster. Fig. 11 c) explains
the situation on March 14 after the explosion of thefirst and third nuclear reactors.
This analysis can also be a valuable tool for
decision-makers to have a better idea of the quantitative estimates of evacuation behavior and patterns.

a)b)(3) Recovery of visitors in Tohoku district
Almost a year
the thatearthquake,
It is after
possiblehe used amany
car orpeople
train toarethe district.
metropolitan
at onepoint. of
now visiting enter
TohokuThecenter
Tourism
Bureauthe MLIT has a policy of creating 28 tourism zones,
activating connections between each area.
The same GPS data can be applied to this kind of
long-term tourism analysis as well as to people movement (1) and evacuation activities (2). Fig. 12 shows
a comparison of trips in Golden Week (GW) in 2010,2011 and 2012. The number of trips is worst in GW
of 2011, that is, just after the earthquake. The number of trips in GW of 2012, after the earthquake, isgreater than in 2010, before the earthquake. Actually,in 2012, many areas were crowded with visitors. We
would like to introduce the details of these analyses
at another time.

c)Fig.11 Evacuation scenario within a week after the nuclear accident (provided by Dr. Teerayut Horanont
as project researcher, University of Tokyo): (a)March 11, the situation before the disaster; (b)March 12, a day after the Tokyo Electric Power
Company (TEPCO) announced the failure of the
Fukushima DNPP backup power and cooling system; (c) March 14, the situation after the second
explosion of the third reactor.

5. TOWARD A COMPACT INFRASTRUCTURE THAT INCLUDES ICTfact, by visiting developing countries, we can realize that people who live in such areas accept the factthat congestion and floods occur, and they still live
happily in spite of the threat of these disasters. As
one means of coping, younger generations in particular make use of mobile phones, linking themselves
to Twitter and Facebook and ensuring that they canmake phone calls to take active action based on thesituation.
Information technology is not just convenient, but it

Japan has witnessed considerable growth, in spiteof a diversification of values, low birth rate, aging
population, global warming, and instability of international society’s progress; yet the experience of thisearthquake made me realize in general terms that it
may be time for us to accept that there will be no timein the future when people protected by civil engineering structures will be absolutely safe. As a matter of283

LegendFig.12 Comparison of trips to Tohoku district during Golden Week (GW) in 2010, 2011 and 2012 (provided by
Mr. Ubukata as collaborative researcher, University of Tokyo). The number of trips is worst in GW of 2011,that is, just after the earthquake. The number of trips in GW of 2012, after the earthquake, is greater than in 2010,
before the earthquake.

debted to Dr. Teerayut Horanont, Mr. Ueyama, andMr. Ubukata, researchers at the University of Tokyo,
for their support. I would like to express my gratitude
to them all.

is also capable of connecting the emotions of people
and so function as an invisible safety net and, as a result, I believe, it can reduce the amount of investment
in infrastructure to a certain extent. I realize that thisis an overused expression, but it may just be necessary
to consider rebuilding society as a whole from the perspective of how each individual can maintain his/herties and how he/she can adapt to circumstances andlive on, as well as consider what the infrastructure
should be.

REFERENCES
1) Special issue: The Great East Japan EarthquakeConsidering Responsive Action When Crisis Occurs,
IPSJ Magazine, Vol. 52, No. 9, pp. 1060-1090, 2011
(in Japanese).
2) Furuhashi, T.: Things We Can Do On Our Own—
Earthquake Disaster Information: sinsai.info—, Spatial Data Infrastructure Supporting Regional Area,
Sekimoto, Y. (eds): Kajo Press, pp. 205-209, 2011
(in Japanese).
3) National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention: 8) The Great East Japan Earthquake Cooperation Information Platform: http://
all311.ecom-plat.jp/.
4) Disaster Prevention Research Institute Kyoto
University, Emergency Mapping Team (EMT),
http://www.drs.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/emt/
member.html.
5) Yagi, K.: ITS Japan Activities for Disaster Relief Operation, International Conference on Spatial Thinking
and Geographic Information Sciences, 2011.

If it is possible to create an infrastructural designthat is lightweight, smart, and suitable for the Digital
Native era, I am hopeful that such a technology may
also be exportable.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I would like to acknowledge the complete cooperation from the City Bureauof the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport andTourism with respect to the Recovery Support Survey Archive. I would also like to note that ZENRIN DataCom Co., Ltd., provided me with the TraﬃcCongestion Statistical Data⃝R . Furthermore, I am in-

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9) Sekimoto, Y., Nishizawa, A., Yamada, H., Shibasaki,R., Kumagai, J., Sagara, T., Kayama, Y. and Ootomo,
S.: Data Mobilization by Digital Archiving of theGreat East Japan Earthquake Survey, Proc. of 21st Geographic Information System Conference, CD-ROM,
2012.
10) Sekimoto, Y., Nakamura, T., Masuda, Y. and Kanasugi, H.: Human Mobility Analysis in the Great East
Japan Earthquake in Tokyo Metropolitan Area using
Large-Scale GPS Data, Proc. of 45th Infrastructure
Planning and Management, JSCE, CD-ROM, 2012
(in Japanese).

6) Sakashita, T.: Disaster and Information, Spatial Data
Infrastructure Supporting Regional Area, Sekimoto,Y. (eds): Kajo Press, pp.211-215, 2011 (in Japanese).
7) International Research Institute of Disaster Science, University of Tohoku, “Michinoku-ShinRoku-Den”—Digital Archive Project of The 2011
Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster—, http://
shinrokuden.irides.tohoku.ac.jp/.
8) National
Diet
Library,
DigitalArchive
Project of The Great East Japan Earthquake,
http://www.ndl.go.jp/jp/311earthquake/disaster_archives/index.html.

(Received October 16, 2012)285