### e. Preparing for Initial Response at Sea

The Japan Coast Guard deploys patrol vessels and aircraft around the clock to allow for rapid responses in the event of a disaster. Also, in accordance with the scale of the disaster a countermeasure headquarters is established to implement damage assessment surveys and rescue operations through patrol vessels and aircraft for an immediate and appropriate response.

## (10) Management of Existing Stock with ICT (Information and Communications Technology)

An optical fiber network is being used to enable the management of public facilities and the sophistication of crisis management by taking advantage of ICT (Information and Communications Technology). Specifically, measures are being promoted for safe road use, such as sophisticated management of optical fibers 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 storm surge disaster prevention stations to prevent tsunami and storm surge damages is being supported through disaster prevention and safety grants and other means.

## (11) Disaster Recovery of Public Works Facilities

In 2014, damages to public works facilities under the authority of MLIT (rivers, roads, coast, sewage, etc.) came to roughly 181.9 billion yen (9,085 cases) of reported damages due to many domestic large-scale disasters such as the sediment-related disasters caused by the short-duration downpour in Hiroshima City in August and the earthquake occurred in northern Nagano Prefecture in November.

Regarding these natural disaster damages, TEC-FORCE was deployed immediately after the disaster. In addition, since FY2014, the disaster restoration technical experts dispatch system has been used to give technical advices and other assistance on the request of the affected local government such as dispatching the experts enrolled in the National Association of Disaster Prevention to pursue swift restoration and reconstruction as well as prevention of secondary disasters.

Also, for municipalities where damages were concentrated in particular, the general price unit of spending limits for disaster assessments was removed and for assessments involving only desk work, the monetary limit for assessments was raised from the usual less than 3 million yen to less than 10 million yen to simplify assessments and greatly reduce the administrative paperwork leading to project adoption in the interest of facilitating rapid disaster recovery to support early recovery.

Furthermore, the districts (40 cases) affected by natural disasters such as heavy rainfall caused by Severe Tropical Storm Nakri and Typhoon Halong and rainy season; strong winds, heavy snow, avalanches and waves from low pressure were granted emergency project promotion grants for disaster measures to ensure the safety and comfort of residents and urgently implemented measures to prevent recurrences of disasters.

## (12) Promoting non-structural Measures Including Information and Public Relations for Safety and Comfort

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