Clarifying the Function of the Emergency Mapping Teamin order to Allocate the Limited Resourcesin the Time of 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake
Reo KIMURA
School of Human Science and Environment, University of Hyogo, Japan 1

Munenari INOGUCHI
Research Institute for Natural Hazards and Disaster Recovery, Niigata University, Japan 2

Keiko TAMURA
Risk Management Office, Niigata University, Japan 3

Takashi FURUYA
Center for Risk Management and Safety Sciences, Yokohama National University, Japan 4

Haruo HAYASHI
Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan 5

Keywords
Mashup, Common Operational Picture, Dynamic Maps, Emergency Mapping Team, GIS

Abstract
The Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred in 2011 caused a tremendous amount of damage spanning overmultiple prefectures due to severe vibrations and tsunami. In order to provide quick and appropriate disaster
responses, prefectures must establish a common operational picture regarding damage situations and disaster
response statuses among cities, "cho" districts, and villages. This is especially important along the coast to
supplement basic functions of those municipalities. The needs of the front line disaster response workers wereextracted, and the Emergency Mapping Team (EMT) clarified the characteristics and challenges related to thevisualization of those needs. The EMT was put in place at the Cabinet Office to investigate how maps should
be utilized.

Introduction
The Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011, caused ground-shaking, huge tsunami,liquefaction and explosion accident of nuclear plant. Those types of damages caused not only large physicalimpact such as human damage and building damage. The impacted area spread over 10 prefectures and 240
cities, wards, districts and villages. This catastrophe has two serious issues; one is “complex catastrophe”, theother is “wide-spread catastrophe.”
In addition, there was a tremendous amount of human and property damages. This disaster triggered a callrkimura@shse.u-hyogo.ac.jp, 1-1-12 Shinzaike-hon-cho, Himeji, Hyogo, 670-0092, JAPANinoguchi@gs.niigata-u.ac.jp
3 tamura@gs.niigata-u.ac.jp
4 t-furuya@ynu.ac.jp
5 hayashi@drs.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp1272

for immediate lifesaving activities, restoration of utilities, and the dispersal of support for victims across many
prefectures throughout Japan.
TheoryThe effective and efficient implementation of disaster response measures necessitates a shared commonoperational picture. Sharing a common operational picture involves the dissemination of information
regarding the state of damages and disaster response activities among disaster responders, thus enabling acommon understanding of the situation. In Japan, there have been initiatives to realize a common operational
picture through effective and efficient information collection at disaster response fields. A recent example ofthis is the Emergency Mapping Center that was established by the Niigata Disaster Management Headquarters
after the Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake of 2007. In this case, a common operational picture enabled effectiveand efficient disaster response activities. In this case, a common operational picture enabled effective andefficient disaster response activity via the mapping.
Based on these experiences, we sought to develop a system to share a common operational picture to aid ina decision making process at the national level by visualizing information on maps. These maps provided acommon operational picture for the large-scale disaster due to the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. In
particular, we extracted information about needs, in order to elucidate the challenges for realization of sharing
a common operational picture on the national level through our collaboration with the Cabinet Office. We
believe that our system is effective for information processing and can be used to support the deployment ofdisaster resources in the future.
MethodThe Cabinet Office Mapping Team operated from the day after the earthquake on March 12, 2011 until
April 26 at a meeting room within the Cabinet Office. Initially we started our day at 10:00 a.m., and often
continued until well past midnight when we just started the activities. As time progressed, we managed to end
each day at around the end of a normal working day by clearly specifying the working time; however, weworked seven days a week until the situation stabilized. After April 2 when the system was well establishedand things were stabilized, we did not work on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. The Emergency Mapping
Team was comprised of the maximum number of people per day during this period at the special meetingroom (n=17). For the duration of the activities, the number of man-day was 278 in total (as counted by a halfday). In reality, there were more people involved; we mobilized more people than 278 man-days due to theback-up system (Figure 1).
Procedures used for the mapping work were: (1) Organize a list of general affairs and needs; (2) Generatedata, figures, and tables; (3) Data processing and spatial processing; (4) Mapping and layout; and (5) Regular
updating and mapping. The primary author of this paper was responsible for the generation of data, figures
and tables, and created a database for mapping and sharing the status recognition data. The co-authors wereresponsible for other procedures. Together, we generated maps in response to requests (Figure 2).

73

Figuree 1. EMT meeetings

Figurre 2. EMT strructure (as ofo March 17, 2011)(One week after the eart
rthquake, six days after EMTElaunch)

The Emerrgency Mappping Team (EEMT) generaated a total ofo 500 maps during its op
operational peeriod (Marchh21 through April 26). The
T maps werewclassifieed into 30 categories
cth
hat were furrther subdiviided into theefollowing seeven major categories: (1) Hazardd observationn informatioon (63 mapps); (2) Hazzard scenarioo
information [Areas undeer the nuclearr plant evacuuation adviso
ory and direcctive (8 mapss), Planned powerpoutagee
by Tokyo E
Electric Poweer (5 maps)]; (3) Estimaated damage compensatioon [Seismic intensity disstribution foreach buildinng (1 map), BuildingB
distribution witthin areas unnder evacuattion advisoryy and directiive (5 maps)),74

Building distribution in low-altitude areas (33 maps)]; (4) Actual damage [Isolated people (31 maps), Missingpeople (38 maps), Injured people (40 maps), Building damage (23 maps), Fires (13 maps)]; (5) Social
infrastructure [Population and number of households in each municipality (2 maps), Distribution of populationage 65 and over (8 maps), Facilities that can accept people who require assistance (7 maps), Satellite imagesof disaster areas (2 maps)]; (6) Response policy [Relationship between transportation centers andtransportation capability (54 maps), Resources to consider for long-term evacuation designation (1 map),
Resources to consider for specific disaster-afflicted area designation (1 map), Resources to consider for
specific disaster-afflicted local public organizations (5 maps)]; and (7) Disaster response results [Evacuation
center provisions (8 maps), Personal safety confirmation (1 map), Application of rescue methods (9 maps),
Application of rescue methods and assistance methods (3 maps), Goods procurement (1 map), Temporary
assistance staff dispatch (25 maps), Utility damage recovery (88 maps), Empty maps to record disaster
response results (18 maps), Visualization of the recognition of disasters to the society by trend leaders (7maps)].
Results
The 500 maps that were generated by the Emergency Mapping Team resulted from a series of spatial
analyses using information that was superimposed onto maps. This process is commonly called “mashup.”
Mashup refers to the formation of a new service by combining technologies and contents from multiple
sources. This allows the child to function in a single web service that was formed by combining multiple
Application Program Interfaces (API). There were also issues with the data collected from the governments:(1) Issues with raw data (data was exchanged as hard copies); (2) Issues with the database (many of the Excel
files generates could not be incorporated into the database); and (3) Issues with making data publicly available(collected data items were not uniform across different municipalities because they had different intentions
and policies in making data publicly available). One of representative maps made with mashup is shown(Figure 3).
In order to create the map, which make all responders know the situation and construct the common
operational pictures, the following process is needed;
1) We collected the data and reformat under the schema of standardized table2) Put the geo-locational information on the each record3) Visualize the Attribute data developing maps with the geo-locational information
Using the example of visualizing where and how much evacuation centers and shelters have how much
evacuees day by day, the procedures would be explained precisely. First, we collected the data from theprovided information by the municipal and local governments. We tried to organize the dataset by each
evacuation centers and shelters day by day. Usually those datasets had no geo-locational information, whilesome of them had the street address or no clue of detecting the street address. Using the street address or thenames of facilities we tried to detect the geo-locational information.

Then we visualized the attribute data ingraph and charts and also visualized it with the geo-locational information.

From the graph we noticed thetotal numbers of evacuation centers and shelters declined in the process of time while some of them did not75

simply follow the trend (Figure 4 and 5).

Figure 3. Maps of the location of evacuation centers and number of evacuees (March 28, 2011)

number of evacuation centers3500

3146

N=3146

3000
2500
2000
1409

93

1

11
Saitama

11Nagano

Ibaraki

Fukushima

Iwate

Miyagithe amount

095

Tokyo

500

Gunma

751

Niigata

865

1000

Aomori1500

name of prefectures

Figure 4. Number of evacuation centers by prefecture76300000

number of evacuees

250000200000150000100000
50000

318
421
509
519
531
610
622
704
715
728
809
819
831
912
926
1006
1019
1031
1111
1124
1206
1216
104

0mm/ddFigure 5. Chronological changes of number of evacuees
Discussion
The Great East Japan Earthquake hit wide over the prefectural boundaries, so the national government hadto handle various pieces of information to allocate the limited resources; however, the scale of the disaster waslarge enough, confusion, lack of coordination and missed opportunities were all but inevitable.

We

implemented the Emergency Mapping Team Project in order to support the national activities and construct
the common operational pictures among disaster responders.

We accomplished certain results by collect theinformation from administrative information resource directly, and organized it by the geo-locational
information in order to visualize it by the subjective maps, which actually helped decision-making process inthe national level.
The Great East Japan Earthquake gave us the severe challenge to overcome. We still straggled to solve its
problems in the reconstruction phase of the disaster process.

We still need how to construct COP efficiently

among organizations and agencies concerned. The place for us to go is that to the workflow of information
analysis must be standardized and implemented in the certain way using the existing technology with thewell-trained administrative officers.

The function of the national training center should be needed to develop

human resources, who can construct the task force to analyze the information and create the common
operational pictures.

Author Biography
Reo KIMURA, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, School of Human Science and Environment, University of Hyogo, Japan
2003-2009 Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Japan77

2009-2011 Associate Professor, Graduate school of Environment and Disaster Research, Fuji Tokoha
University, Japan
2011- Associate Professor, School of Human Science and Environment, University of Hyogo, Japan
Munenari INOGUCHI, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Research Institute for Natural Hazards and Disaster Recovery, Niigata University, Japan
Keiko TAMURA, Ph.D.
Professor, Risk Management Office, Niigata University, Japan
Takashi FURUYA, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Center for Risk Management and Safety Sciences, Yokohama National University, Japan
Haruo HAYASHI, Ph.D.
Professor, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan78