fiber for continuous monitoring of the road slope and providing disaster information through the Internet. Also, in addition to remote control of floodgates and the remote monitoring of river flow conditions and volcanic regions, sewage treatment plants and pump stations are connected with optical fibers for remote monitoring and control as well to make management more sophisticated.

In addition, to speed up and consolidate the control of floodgates and other facilities, the development of tsunami and high tide disaster prevention centers to prevent tsunami and high tide damages is being supported through social infrastructure improvement general grants and other means.

## (12) Disaster Recovery of Public Works Facilities

In 2012, damages to public facilities under the authority of MLIT (rivers, roads, coasts, sewerage, etc.) came to roughly 231.4 billion yen (13,837 cases) of reported damages due to many large-scale disasters such as frost heaves and the heavy rainfall in Northern Kyushu.

TEC-FORCE and others were deployed immediately after the disaster and swiftly carried out for restoration and reconstruction as well as provide technical advice to prevent secondary disasters.

Also, to enable rapid responses to major disasters such as the heavy rain in Northern Kyushu, the spending limit of the general unit price for disaster assessments were increased from the usual 10 million yen to 20 million yen, and the monetary limit that can be assessed in the office away from the field was raised from less than 3 million yen to less than 6 million yen to streamline assessment and greatly simplify and fast track the paperwork leading to project approval for the rapid restoration of affected areas.

Furthermore, the districts (84 cases) affected by natural disasters such as heavy rainfall due to the seasonal rain front including the Northern Kyushu heavy rains, waves from strong winds and heavy snowfall were granted emergency project promotion grants for disaster measures to ensure the safety and comfort of residents and urgently implemented measures to prevent a recurrence of disasters.

## (13) Promoting Soft Measures Including Information and Public Relations for Safety and Comfort

To ensure safety and comfort, soft measures were promoted in addition to hard measures for natural disasters and the status of progress was subject to annual inspections in accordance with the “MLIT General Framework of Soft Measures Promotion for Safety and Comfort,” however, the Great East Japan Earthquake brought to light the need for congruent and integrated evaluations of hard and soft aspects and currently deliberations are in progress following the re-evaluation of the Social Capital Improvement Priority Plan/MLIT Disaster Prevention Operation Plan.

## Secure Transportation Systems Resistant to Disasters

## (1) Ensuring Redundancy and Substitutability

Rail, ports and other facilities are being made disaster resistant in addition to establishing an emergency transport framework for rescue and restoration activities ensures redundancy and substitutability in efforts to minimize the impact to domestic transport activities in the event of a disaster and secure the safety of users.

The road network’s function is completely dependent upon being connected and unless replacement routes are secured during disasters, lessons learned from the heavy rain disaster and the Great East Japan Earthquake made it clear that it will be impossible to respond to the large-scale disasters expected in the future.

In order to build a disaster resistant wide area network, the development of arterial high-standard highways that connect major cities is being promoted to ensure replacement routes for sections at risk of causing disruptions to wide area transport when current routes are severed by earthquakes, tsunamis, heavy rains, and heavy snows expected in the future.