The Great East Japan Earthquake changed our country. The magnitude of damage caused by the tsunami far exceeded our assumptions, and videos of the disaster spread quickly throughout not only Japan but also the rest of the world.

As described in the preceding section, the earthquake also changed the national and corporate awareness of the need to prepare for disasters. Furthermore, the accident at the nuclear power plant will substantially transform energy policy and the energy initiatives that have been promoted in the past.

Based on this experience, in its land, infrastructure, transport and tourism administration, the Ministry is advancing new initiatives to ensure sustainable and energetic national land and regional community development by establishing closer cooperation among different departments in its organizations, with related government agencies, and with regional communities while taking into consideration changes in the national awareness caused by the earthquake.

This section describes such shifts in land, infrastructure, and transport administration.

## 1 Change in disaster preparedness

(Tsunami disaster management by infrastructure development and other measures)

The previous tsunami measures assumed such levels of tsunami that have occurred repeatedly in the past and are highly likely to happen in the near future. The massive tsunami caused by the March 11 earthquake far exceeded such assumptions, causing enormous damage. It was recognized anew that with breakwaters alone, it is difficult to protect towns behind them from tsunami that rarely occurs but is colossal in scale, and that there is a limit to depending on the disaster-prevention functions of such structures though they are effective to a certain extent in lowering the height of the tsunami, delaying it from reaching towns, and maintaining the coastline as observed in the tsunami this time.

After the earthquake, various discussions were held at meetings of the Central Disaster Management Council, Reconstruction

Design Council, and other organizations, and on July 6, 2011, the planning group of the transport policy committee under the Council for Social Infrastructure compiled its emergency proposals on city planning policy for tsunami and disaster prevention. Based on the recognition that there is no upper limit to disaster, these emergency proposals consider "human life" as the most important of all and make "multiple defenses," which takes all kinds of measures, the basic principle to prevent tsunami disaster and reduce tsunami damage.

This policy was also included in the government’s “Basic Policy for Reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake”.

The Central Disaster Management Council organized a group of experts to investigate earthquake and tsunami measures using the lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake and

published a final report in September 2011. In this report, the Council basically assumed two levels of tsunami according to the scale and frequency of tsunami in order to devise future tsunami measures.

Level 1 tsunami refers to one with a relatively high frequency (which occurs roughly once in tens of years to over a hundred years). In order to cope with this level of tsunami, in addition to protecting human life with such structures as facilities to preserve the coastline, the report recommends that the government should protect the property of residents, stabilize the economic activities of local communities, and maintain production bases effectively.

Level 2 tsunami relates to one of the largest class which occurs quite rarely but causes tremendous damage (which occurs roughly once in hundreds of years to a thousand years). In order to cope with this level of tsunami, based on the concept of “disaster reduction,” which focuses on minimizing damage, the report recommends that the government should establish comprehensive tsunami countermeasures falcing all measures. One example of the former is to develop facilities to preserve the coastline, and that of the latter is to compile detailed hazard maps.