Achieving Natural Disaster Business Success by Developing Clientsand Community: Lessons from Local Leading Companies
in Nagaoka City, Niigata, Japan- Japanese flood monitoring experiences for the Philippines –Kurokawa Kiyoto, Ritsumeikan University
1. Introduction
1. 1 Back ground and Research questions
This paper aims to investigate the possible disaster related business for flood monitoring
system. The role of the private sector is increasing in the field of ODA. And JICA is planning to
expand the participation of the private sector to the social development as well. After the East Japan
Great Disaster (EJGD) in 2011, the level of natural disaster risk perception is rising among thepeople, however it is still widely agreed that not many people actually take proper disaster
preparations. And the monitoring systems to detect the risks of tsunami ware not yet perfect tounderstand the threats.
In addition to EJGD, we have observed many historical floods all over the world including
Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam, recently. This is partly because of the rapid urbanization,industrialization, deforestation and climate change.
The traditional idea for the flood prevention was to understand the possibilities of the floods bymonitoring the condition of the river flow including water level, water velocity and quantity.
However, not much is known about the factors that drive people to take natural disaster preparation
before the actual disaster strikes. The technological improvements cannot be always practical.
We found a completely deferent idea to prevent the potential flood risks by introducing simple
web camera system. We have been conducting the field survey in Nagaoka city, Nigata prefecture
and Yokohama city, Kanagawa prefecture since October 2012.
At the same time, we started our joint project for Lake Laguna basin management project withThe University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). In the Philippines, we saw many flood
disasters, even they had introduced some monitoring stations and early warning systems. In August
2013, there was a historical floods in the Philippines. More than 200 evacuation centers were opened
in Manila and surrounding provinces, filled with tens of thousands of people. More than 600,000
people have been affected by the floods. In many coastal towns along swollen Lake Laguna, near
Manila, and in food-growing riverside provinces, residents were trapped on rooftops, waded throughthe streets or drifted on makeshift rafts.
After the survey in Nagaoka, we have convinced that the private sector can play an important rolein disaster prevention, mitigation and preparedness by investing more in disaster risk reduction, bothfor their own business strategy, and in the local communities where their workforce resides. For
multinational companies with global reach, corporate social responsibility initiatives should seize
upon disaster risk reduction as an increasingly important development and humanitarian issue.
(UNISDR 2008) We had a series of big natural disasters in 2011 including EJGD and huge floods inThailand. Japan’s most profitable companies built up factories in developing country such as

Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, so Japan faces the biggest impact from the floods. We
learned safety operations of factory ware essential to preserve production linkages worldwide.
Our research question is to investigate the advantage and challenges of the private sector initiativein the field of the flood management and propose some practical and simple floods preparation plansin the developing country to the Philippines. We have proposed a JICA partnership project in thePhilippines and JICA has accepted us recently. This paper tried to investigate the new challenges tointroduce the new idea to the flood management in the Philippines. We analyzed the merits of thesimple floods warning system to improve the economic resilience of the local community and at
the same time, found the new challenges and limitations of the private sector.
Disaster risk management refers to the systematic management of administrative decisions,organization, operational skills and abilities to implement policies, strategies and coping
capacities of the society or individuals to lessen the impacts of natural and related
environmental and technological hazards (United Nations Development Program, 2004).
1.2 Significance of the Study
Before 11 March 2011, Japan had already developed sophisticated high-tech tsunami-warning
systems including hundreds of real-time monitoring stations. But on 11 March 2011, thepeoples’ response was not enough to save their lives. Many sociologists, economists andpsychologists have concerned about the practical solutions to save their lives. (Unagami 2012)
In the Philippines, some of river basins where flood control works have been implemented isincreasing year by year. However, they had serious damages caused by flood disasters every
year, especially in rural areas. In this paper, we have examined the effectiveness of the simple
web camera monitoring system developed by a small company in Nagaoka, Japan. New
innovations mainly come from the private sector, since they can easily understand the practicalvalue of the system comparing to the public sector or academia. This is our research hypothesis.
The traditional monitoring system is trying to predict the precise coming floods as possible as
they can. And they were usually equipped with highly sophisticated measuring devices.
Accordingly, it takes much costs and time. But the simple web camera system can beeasily introduced. The objective of the project is to mitigate flood damage in the selected coreareas in Lake Laguna basin in the Philippines by implementing simple web camera warning
system and human development program against flood, thereby contributing to the sustainable
and stable economic development in the target areas.

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1.3 Methodology
A case study has been used in this research in order to meet the purpose. We conducted ourstudy by looking at available secondary data, and have ensured the credibility of our study by
evaluating various sources regarding the information required in order to answer our researchquestions.
2. Literature review
2.1

Lessons learned from the EJGD

There are some differences between Tsunami and Floods, but we have learned the mostimportant factor to activate the people’s response to the warnings. The warning system wasmostly perfect. It includes web based information, mobile e-mail notification, warning siren andloud speaker systems. However, more than half of the people at the risk area recognized thewarning via TV news.
2.3 Floods in Nagaoka City, Nigata JAPANNagaoka is located in the center of Niigata prefecture. Nagaoka city
has wide-spread hill-side areas and the Japanese largest river, The
Shinano River, as well as the coastal line of Sea of Japan. The riverflows through it from south to north and industrial development area is
on both banks of the river. Niigata-Fukushima Heavy Rain on 13 July
2004, killed 4 residents and destroyed 3,996 houses. Based on the valuable experiences,
Nagaoka city is recognized as a model city in Japan in terms of DRR (Disaster Risk
Reduction) activities. For examples, VDMG (Voluntary Disaster Management Groups) basedon Community Based Organizations has increased dramatically since the 2004. Currently
VDMGs are organized in 88% of the city while the national average is 73%. In addition, 50
experts of disaster management are certified through the Chuetsu Citizen’s College for Disaster
Management and Safety that was initiated after the Chuetsu Earthquake in 2004, and they are
actively mobilizing citizens as the leaders of regional disaster management. Nagaoka city hopes
to establish as a model city for disaster risk reduction activities. The simple web camera based
flood observation system was introduced to tackle these continuous flood risks. And by using
these experiences, Nagaoka city government has decided totransfer their knowledge to the Philippines.
2.4 Floods around Manila and Lake Laguna basin
2.4.1 Overview of the target area
The Philippines is one of the most natural disaster prone
countries in the world. Lake Laguna basin is important areas forfood supply and economic development in the Philippines as
they hold large grain-growing areas, industrial growth corridor,

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economic zones and residential area for Metro Manila. However, frequent flood damage andweakness to floods are hampering the economic activities. The flood management works inthese areas are important for sustainable economic development of the Philippines. Iloilo City
hosts the first Philippine International River Summit on 30 May to 1 June 2012. The summit
provides a venue for discussing common concerns of cities located along rivers, including
disaster risk reduction and ecotourism. (JICA 2012)
2.4.2 Flood Disaster Related Project by Major Donors
We recognized various flood projects in the Philippines since they had continuous flood
disasters. Those project can be classified by the Donors as Tbale-1. Bilateral donors including
JICA, US, Spanish, Australia, UK and Canada are commonly to improve the monitoring andfurcating systems for the floods. Multilateral donors including World Bank, ADB and UNDP are
working together with some bilateral donors and providing necessary funds to the government
agencies in the Philippines.
Table-1 Flood related projects in the Philippines
Project name and related organization in the Philippines
Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) Capacity
Enhancement, Office of Civil Defense (OCD). (2012-2015)
A Simple and Community Friendly Independent Floods Observation
System for the Laguna Lake district and National Capital Region, The
University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), Laguna Lake
Development Authority (LLDA) (2013-2016)
ASEAN – US Cooperation on Disaster Management, ICS(Incident
Command System) Phase 2 (2009-2012)
Program for Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER) Phase 3
Establishment of Reconstruction Monitoring and Evaluation System(RMES)
Climate Change Adaptation Project Study to establish impact of climate change in the
agriculture sector in two pilot areas (Bicol Region and Region 2), Department ofEnvironment and Natural Resources (DENR)

Donor
JICA
JICA

US State Department,
USAID
USAID, Office of U.S. Foreign
Disaster Assistance (OFDA)

World Bank, US State
Department, USAID
Spanish Government,
World Bank

Integrated Disaster Risk Management Framework – Disaster Risk
Profiling and Development of Risk Models
Hazards Mapping and Assessment for Effective Community-based
Disaster Management (READY), DENR, Department of Science andTechnology (DOST)Greater Metro Manila Area Risk Analysis Project

ADB

Building Community Resilience and Strengthening Local Government
Capacities for Recovery and Disaster Risk Management

UNDP, CIDA

Flood Early Warning System in Metro Manila, Philippines, Center for
Disaster Preparedness, University of Philippines (2012- )Christian Aid
UK Government

UNDP, AusAID,

AusAid, UNDP

(Source: Kiyoto KUROKAWA from the various website information.)In the PAGASA Rainfall Warning System, Yellow, Orange, Red was used based on the color
coding scheme of the Community-Based Flood Early Warning System under the UNDP project.
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These colors are generally associated with awareness, preparedness and emergency respectively.
JICA has also started our new project, “A Simple and Community Friendly Independent Floods
Observation System for the Laguna Lake district and National Capital Region in the Republic of
Philippines.” The uniqueness of this simple system for flood observation. All the projects areproviding training program since the importance of risk perception in shaping people’s behavior
is essential. (Slovic 1987) emphasized the role of risk perception by indicating that the public
relies on risk perception to evaluate hazard situation. Perception could be viewed as a process oftransforming inputs (e.g. ﬂood warning) to output (e.g. public mitigation response). People who
perceive that they are vulnerable are more likely to respond to warnings and undertake
protective measures. Thus, understandings of the people’s risk perception will inﬂuence theeffectiveness of the ﬂood management strategy.
2.5 The trust-confidence-cooperation (TCC) model for the flood warning
The value of the flood warning system will be evaluated by using TCC model. People’s
reaction by the flood warning system is one of the most important factor to increase theeffectiveness of the system. The TCC model, developed by Siegrist et al. in 2005 can be used toincrease the effectiveness of the flood warning system. Residents’ trust in the flood warning
system depends on how similar to their own values. This judgment depends on related
information provided by the community leaders and other residents. Their trust in the warning
system depends on their assessment of the quality of information provided by the system in thepast. Past performance of the warning system including false warning will affect theirconfidence strongly. Social trust, especially from the community leader, and confidence in thesystem jointly determine the level of cooperation that the resident intends to have with thewarning. This intention can produce a variety of cooperative behaviors, such as protecting thewarning system by themselves, accepting advice about risk levels from the system and acting on
the basis of that advice.
Figure-1 Trust-Confidence-Cooperation model
for flood warning system

Narrative
Information
Value
similarity

Social Trust

Past
performance

Confidence

Personal
experience

Report from
OthersCooperative
intention

Cooperative behaviors(Preparedness)(Effective warning)

Source: Siegrist et al. (2005)
Modified by the author
trust-confidence-cooperation model

3. Flood Survey in the Philippines
We have developed our project proposal by combining our previous surveys in Japan and the5Philippines. UPLB, our main partner, has been working for the flood control researches,
especially in the field of the agriculture.
3.1 Target area
Manila is the largest city in the Philippines and one of the country’s most industrialized area.
The target area has a tropical monsoon climate with two seasons: a typhoon and wet season
lasting from September through March and a dry season lasting from April through August. The
Lake Laguna is the biggest lake in the Philippines. We have selected two different communities
to examine the effectiveness of the proposed simple web camera flood observation system.
Victoria village, one of our target area, is a typical agricultural rural village. The population isabout 35,000. The other target is Town of Los Banos, 101,000 population. The town is under the
typical rapid urbanization and industrialization. These two are under the flood risk.
3.2 Participatory Mapping
Nowadays, all the donors and government agencies have introduced this mapping operations
with the collaborations of the local community. Basic data for flood disaster risk management
are sometimes limited, unobtainable, incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, contradictory, or
expensive. Disaster risk managers, especially those in local governments, therefore face many
barriers to accessing and utilizing up-to-date and accurate hazard and risk data. (Chapman 2013)
In Nagaoka city, we have recognized similar activities and they have developed it on the website.
4. Conclusions and Remaining Issues
The flood warning systems were able to reduce economic damages and loss of life byproviding lead time for people to take protective measures. But it is not perfect still needs some
improvement to activate people’s response to the warnings. All the donors are trying to
introduce new sophisticated technologies to improve these system, especially early warning
system. Using warning systems to trigger community response is the key to flood disastermanagement. Nowadays, the speed of the floods are increasing because of the rapid
urbanization. No matter how advanced technology becomes, the guiding principle is that people
should take the initiative to understand the potential risks of the flood on their own. Warning
information has the limitations of the forecasting technology. Inaccurate or inappropriate
warning information could mislead or delay evacuation and increase the loss of lives. Disasterrisk communication must be practiced regularly, so that people are able to better understand theflood warning system. From this preliminary survey, we found out some useful findings such as
the cultural aspects to understand the preparedness of the flood risk. This implies that flood
warnings should be tailored to the characteristics of the target people. Introduction of
Nagaoka’s simple web camera based flood warning system to the Philippines is a new challenge
toward the effective flood risk management.

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