The International Emergency Management Society
2014 Annual Conference, October 20-23, 2014, Niigata, Japan

DEVELOPMENT OF NERSS TRAINING PROGRAM FOR
EARTHQUAKE EMERGENCY RESPONSE CAPACITY BUILDING OF
LOCAL GOVERNMENTS*
1

LAI Junyan

BAI Pengfei DING Lu ZHANG Yuan
HAYASHI Haruo
4
HOSOKAWA Masafumi and SAKURADA Yukihisa5

2KIMURA Reo3

1

Engineer, National Earthquake Response Support Service, Beijing, China
Professor, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
3
Associate Professor, School of Human Science and Environment, Hyogo University, Himeji, Japan
4
Group leader and Senior Researcher, Earthquake and Natural Disaster Laboratory, National ResearchInstitute of Fire and Disaster, Tokyo, Japan
5
Researcher, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Email: calla.junyan.lai@gmail.com
2

ABSTRACT :Response to earthquakes of medium magnitude is as significant as to catastrophic earthquakes, since theoccurrences of the former one are as many as dozens times of the latter ones so far from 1900. In China, theobligation is assigned to local government to protect people against earthquakes under magnitude of Ms. 6.0.
But some obstacles such as inadequate planning for disasters, lack of public awareness of earthquakes, andshortage of qualified emergency managers, are in the way that local governments perform their obligations.
When earthquake hits, those hazards unaware may break out concurrently and put thousands lives and millions
property in danger. The response capacity of local government is crucial.
To enhance the capacity of local governments of response to earthquake emergency, the National Earthquake
Response Support Service (NERSS) of China started to work on a training program from years ago. With thecooperation with JICA and Japanese scientists in recent five years, based on lessons-learnt from pastearthquakes and disasters in China, a prototype of earthquake disaster management curriculum has been created,demonstrated and continuously improved. This paper reviews the prototype curriculum and its development
methodology, presents the demonstrative deliveries of the curriculum, and discusses the training effectivenessand further improvements. Applying international emergency management framework and experience, focusing
on local government capacity building, the demonstrative trainings have been proved to be beneficial toresponse activities of local governments and the latest amendment to earthquake preplan in China. Futuresystematic tracking research of training effectiveness is proposed to keep curriculum updating and appropriate
as times change.

KEYWORDS:
Earthquake, Emergency Response, Training Program, Capacity Building, Local Governments

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 More Occurrence of Minor Earthquakes
In the year of 2008, including the catastrophic earthquake of Ms.8.0 occurred in Sinchuan Province,
earthquakes with magnitude lager than Ms. 5.0 hit mainland China as many as 99 times. Statistics showthat the occurrences of earthquakes with Ms. 6.9 and lower are as many as dozens times of the occurrencesof Ms. 7.0 and lager earthquakes in mainland China so far from 1900. Minor earthquakes act more
frequently.

*

Supported by Strategic Japanese-Chinese Cooperative Program on “Earthquake Disaster Mitigation” No. 2012DFG20510”.

The International Emergency Management Society
2014 Annual Conference, October 20-23, 2014, Niigata, Japan

Table 1 Earthquake Occurrences Statistics(Mainland China, since 1900)
Magnitude
Frequency (times per year)
Ms. 5.0 - 5.9
16
Ms. 6.0 - 6.9
4
Ms. 7.0 - 7.9
0.667
Larger than Ms. 8.0
0.083
1.2 Local Governments Dominate in Response to Minor Earthquakes
In National Earthquake Emergency Plan of China, territorial based graded response to earthquakes is
one of its principles. According to the impacts of earthquakes, response is divided into four levels. The
highest level, Level I response, means national response that may mobilize resources of the whole country
as relief efforts. And Level II, III and IV response are dominated by provincial, city and county
government respectively.
1.3 Need of Training Program for Earthquake Emergency Response Capacity Building of Local
Governments
In an earthquake disaster, disaster responders from local governments are required to gather and send
information, make decisions, and coordinate with other sections, departments, and relevant organizations,etc. rapidly and appropriately under extraordinary circumstances. But inadequate planning for disasters,
lack of public awareness of earthquakes, and shortage of qualified emergency managers, etc., make thesituation even more difficult. When earthquake hits, those hazards unaware may break out concurrently andput thousands lives and millions property in danger.
The need of training for earthquake emergency response capacity building of local governments has
been identified by ZHANG J.(2013). But no such training program has been reported. Therefore, foreffectively response to frequently-occurring earthquakes, it is urged that a training program be developed toenhance the response capacity of local governments in China.

2. METHODOLOGY AND APPROACH
In China, earthquake administration system consists of three sub-systems: surveillance and early warning,
prevention, and disaster management, which are three cycles as shown in Fig. 1. The outermost cycle issurveillance and early warning sub-system, which was firstly established among the three sub-systems in 1966.
The middle cycle is to prevent or to mitigate structural damage in case that earthquake hit. Prevention
sub-system was set up after Tangshan earthquake on July 28th, 1976. In 1988, after a Ms. 7.6 earthquake
following by a Ms. 7.2 aftershock in Yunnan Province, 743 were killed, 4,105 were injured, and about 2 million
people were made IDPs. It was found that the recovery and reconstruction from earthquake cost so much that
may beyond local capacity. Assistance from national and provincial government was highly expected. It wasalso the first time that international assistance for natural disaster was accepted by Chinese government (Chen
Shouliang, Zhong Yicun, 1989). Later in 1989, earthquake disaster management became the third sub-system of
earthquake administration system at national level, which includes three phases: preparedness, response andrecovery.

The International Emergency Management Society
2014 Annual Conference, October 20-23, 2014, Niigata, Japan

Figure 1

Earthquake Administration System of China

Based on the concept model of Chinese earthquake disaster management cycle, with support of China
Earthquake Administration (CEA) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), trainers from National
Earthquake Response Support Service (NERSS) of China have been working closely with Japanese scientists, todevelop a tailored training system for emergency managers in China since May 2009.
2.1 Training Needs Assessment
In order to develop a practical curriculum, NERSS also collaborate closely with local authorities, including
Sichuan Province, Qinghai Province, Shanghai and the three model provinces picked by the Joint Committee of
CEA-JICA project. Questionnaire and interview methods are employed to identified training needs, and to
generalize basic materials for the later development of courses.
Table 2 Interview Matrix of Training Needs Assessment
Historical Earthquake
Seismic Activity Trend
Seismic Background
Active Faults
Design Seismic Intensity
Geological and Geographical Environment
Demography
Buildings
Transportation
Power Supply
Economic & Social Development
Communication System
Gas Supply
Industry
Education
Medical Services
Emergency Management System
Organizational Arrangements

The International Emergency Management Society
2014 Annual Conference, October 20-23, 2014, Niigata, Japan

Cases of Earthquake Response

Planning
Human Resourses
Equipments & Relief Goods
Technological Support System
Seismic Parameters
Direct Damages
Secondary Hazards and Impacts
Organizational Adjustments
Timelines of Response Activities

And furthermore, after training, the issues and ideas of trainees from local authorities are shared among
trainees, trainers and Japanese professors, which are reflected in “After Training Review”.
2.2 Learning Model for Curriculum Design
Learning is a process of imitation and emulation to acquire certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
Bransford (2000) states that “To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must not only have a deep
foundation of factual knowledge and understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, butalso organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application”. Hayashi(2009) also defined a learning
process that combines three elements of development of human resources: "learning", "drilling", and"exercising". From the specific aspect of training emergency responders, lecture, discussion, critical thinking
and practice should be weighed as equal importance. Both lectures and exercise should be incorporated into thecurriculum, to provide trainees with sufficient opportunities to develop competence in earthquake disastermanagement.
To effectively combine lectures and exercise in curriculum design, a learning model as shown in Figure 2 isdeveloped. The information collected in needs assessment is used not only to understand the background of
trainees, but also as a whole package of emergency response experience full of "implicit knowledge". Utilizing
cluster analysis technique and timeline analysis technique upon those basic materials, some of knowledge
become easy to understand and to interpret. It is so called "explicit knowledge" that is delivered and emphasizedin lectures. Scenarios of exercise are developed based on cases of earthquake response collected in needs
assessment interview. At this step trainees may integrate those explicit knowledge with their own experience,
and acquire skills to apply them in a simulated scenario presented by a tabletop exercise. And their attitude will
be taught through full-function exercises or in a real mission.

Figure 2 Curriculum Design Model

The International Emergency Management Society
2014 Annual Conference, October 20-23, 2014, Niigata, Japan

2.3 Curriculum Develop Flow
In the aspect of curriculum development, quality of every course has been recognized as crucial. Thus aPlan-Do-Check-Action (PDCA) methodology has been employed to manage the whole process. Specifically,“P” is to plan and design curriculum and to develop courses, “D” is to deliver lectures and conduct tabletop
Exercise, “C” is to test how much trainees master knowledge transferred in lectures, to evaluate skills thattrainees develop in training, to gather feedbacks from trainees, and to analyze strengths and weakness of the
training system, and “A” is to compile action plan for further improvement.

Figure 3 Development Flowchart of Earthquake Disaster Management Training System

3. RESULTS
3.1 Demonstrative Trainings
From March 2012 to April 2014, six demonstrative trainings have been held respectively for trainees from
Beijing, Yunnan Province, Jiangsu Province, Hebei Province, Dalian, and Shanghai. Details of thedemonstrative trainings are shown in Table 3. During each delivery, the trainees were encouraged to share theirpoints and experience from their daily work in lectures, and in table-top exercise, they were divided according
to their affiliations into three groups, to simulate response activities after a Level-II earthquake disaster strikes.

Time
Location
Where Trainees
are from
Population oftrainees

Table 3 Demonstrative Trainings
March, May,
July,
October,November,
2012
2012
2012
2012
2012
Beijing Kunming Nanjing Shijiagzhuang Beijing
Dalian,Hebei Yunnan Jiangsu Hebei
Beijing
22

39

50

24

24

March, 2013
Beijing
Hebei, Jiangsu,
Yunnan42

April,
2014
Shanghai
Shanghai
25

The International Emergency Management Society
2014 Annual Conference, October 20-23, 2014, Niigata, Japan

Trainees mainly came from three different systems:(1) Earthquake Administration system, which is responsible for policy-making of earthquake disastermanagement;(2) Civil Affairs system, which is in charge of the preparation, deployment and distribution of relief supply that
related to basic survival needs of victims (Water, instant food, tents, etc.), and also in charge of the treatment of
the remains of the deceased, in each kind of disaster; and(3) The local governments.
They are quite diverse in the aspect of experience in disaster management. The distribution of gender, served
agencies and years of service of the trainees are shown in Figure 4.

(a) Gender Distribution(b) Distribution of Served Agencies(c) Distribution of Years of Service

Figure 4 Statistics of trainees from Hebei Province (in the demonstrative training in March, Beijing)

3.2 Confirmatory Evaluations
After each lecture in the demonstrative trainings, a confirmatory evaluation (knowledge test) was taken by thetrainees used pre-prepared papers. As an example, the result of each test in the demonstrative training in
Kunming, May 2012 are shown in Figure 5. The results of confirmatory evaluations are negative skew
distributions, which proved a high mastery of relative knowledge by the trainees through demonstrative
trainings.

Figure 5 Confirmatory evaluation results (demonstrative training in Kunming, May 2012)

3.3 Feedbacks from Trainees
Feedbacks from trainees were collected through questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of twenty questions,
including four fact questions, thirteen ordinal-polytomous questions and three open-ended questions. Allquestionnaires have been recycled. The results of feedbacks are shown in Table 4.
Table 4 Feedback from TraineesNo.
1

Feedback Aspect
Curriculum

concentrates

on

Averagethethemeof 93.6%

HighestLowest100%

80%

The International Emergency Management Society
2014 Annual Conference, October 20-23, 2014, Niigata, Japan“Earthquake Disaster Management” (Out of 100%)2Curriculum Practicality (Out of 100%)

72.7%

100%

40%

3

Curriculum Novelty (Out of 5)

4.45

5

3

4

Curriculum Consistency (Out of 5)

4.55

5

3

5

Send-outs (Out of 5)

4.60

5

4

6

Trainers’ Skills (Out of 5)

4.59

5

3

7

Design of Tabletop Exercise, including scenarios 4.60
setup, injections, etc. (Out of 5)

5

3

8

Tabletop Exercise Add-values (Out of 5)

5

4

4.67

4. DISCUSSIONS
4.1 Customize Curriculum to Local Needs is Essential
Local needs assessment is very important to courses selection and curriculum design. Pre-training
assessment should cover not only trainees' opinion but also local knowledge including seismic background,
economic and social development, emergency management system and cases of earthquake response whichshould reflect and specifically addressed in curriculum.
4.2 Scenario-based Teaching Method Enhances Training Experience
Earthquake response training belongs to the science of management in which case study is vital. In lectures,
we should combine interpretation with best practice to precisely and vividly deliver ideas; and in exercises, timepressure and visual and auditory information of disaster scenario stimulate trainees to release their own potential
dealing crisis. A direct evidence obtained in the demonstrative trainings is that trainees valued the add-value oftabletop exercise as an average of 4.67 (out of 5), which is the highest evaluation in all items.
4.3 Flow of Knowledge is Core of Training ProgramThis study developed a learning model for curriculum design, which promotes learning systematically,effectively and efficiently. Several tools including timeline analysis, cluster analysis, scenario reproduction arefound useful in extracting knowledge from experience and in testing the knowledge. Flow of knowledge that is
carried by lectures and exercise through the whole process of learning is the core of and contributes to theconsistency of the training program.

5. CONCLUSIONS
Generally the feedbacks of the demonstrative trainings are good. The learning model "lecture, drilling, andexercising" has been validated. Further work should be done in eliminating the outer effects and then revealing
more significant factors that function on training effects. Applying international emergency management
framework and experience, focusing on local government capacity building, the demonstrative trainings havebeen proved to be beneficial to response activities of local governments and the latest amendment to earthquake
preplan in China. Future systematic tracking research of training effectiveness is proposed to keep curriculum
updating and appropriate as times change.

REFERENCES

The International Emergency Management Society
2014 Annual Conference, October 20-23, 2014, Niigata, Japan

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